Terracycle <
http://www.myatlantamommy.com/2009/12/terracycle.html> is a fantastic organization which takes used wrappers and turns them into some super cool stuff! I am happy and proud to announce Terracycle recently invited me to join their Blogger Club! Yay! AND they have offered to do a cool Back to School giveaway for My Atlanta Mommy readers, which I will let you know about very soon!
Terracycle <
http://www.myatlantamommy.com/2009/12/terracycle.html> is a fantastic organization which takes used wrappers and turns them into some super cool stuff! They are always coming up with fun and cool ways to recycle, but they also have come up with a way (actually 6 ways) Moms can go green, reduce waste at home, AND raise money for their kids school and/or favourite charity.
“We hope to wake up one day and become the new version of recycling, where every waste stream has a solution within the TerraCycle system.”
It all started with worms. When fed organic waste, worm ‘tea’ is produced through their excrement. One man began to bottle this concoction into used soda bottles as a natural plant food, by taking food scraps from the disposal bin at Princeton Dining Services.
That man was Tom Szaky. By the next summer, Tom met his first investor, and TerraCycle was born. As sales of the natural plant food grew, Tom began looking for new ways to reuse. His company began to take the items that nobody else wanted, cigarette butts, toothbrushes, juice cartons, expired pills and food wrappers, and explore ways or reusing anything and everything that was available.
“‘We want to be the recycling solution for everything that’s not recyclable today,’ Tom says, ‘But we don’t have all the answers yet.
Tom Szaky wants to be the rag-and-bone man to the world, collecting the rubbish no one else wants – cigarette butts, razors, expired pills and plastic food wrappers – and turning an enormous profit by finding new uses for it.
His US-based company TerraCycle already has rubbish collecting and recycling operations in six countries and expects to launch in 11 more (including Japan, Australia and Sweden) in the next year. He launched TerraCycle in Britain last September and in Ireland this month.
'We’re just a $40 million company at the moment,’ he says. But he plans to become the Google of garbage. 'A billion-dollar company doesn’t seem that big… why not!’
My mother called me last night to tell me about an interesting notice on the side of her Wheat Thins box. Apparently Wheat Thins has teamed up with Terracycle to recyle their packages. My mother proceeded to tell me a bit more about it and then sent me a link to read through today. Here’s what I found in their “About Us” page:
TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials. With over 50 products available at major retailers like Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Petco and Whole Foods Market, TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by finding innovative, unique uses for materials others deem garbage.
You can be a part of our eco-revolution, just sign up for one of our FREE Brigades or look for TerraCycle products at your local retailer.
Why is WalMart selling trash? Because it is coming repurposed from TerraCycle Inc. I’m sure you have seen some of their stuff. TerraCycle sells backpacks, kites and coolers made from reused drink pouches, chip bags and candy wrappers.
Their products are actually really cool looking. I see them everywhere. My son’s school even collects Capri Sun pouches for them. However, so far, the venture has lost money. The items they use are otherwise tough to recycle trash.
Thankfully for TerraCycle (and the landfills), WalMart agreed to sell dozens of the products in connection with Earth Day during April. If enough of the items sold during the trial period, the company would land a huge deal with WalMart. If I had realized that, I would’ve picked up a couple of their things. I saw them, but really wasn’t in the market for them in April.
TerraCycle Inc. aims to make money by reusing the hard-to-recycle trash the U.S. produces each year — but it first needs to find out if Walmart Stores Inc. and other retailers think there's enough demand for its products.
The company, which sells backpacks, kites and insulated coolers made from reused candy wrappers, drink pouches and potato-chip bags that normally would have gone to landfills, has so far been a money-losing proposition. But Walmart, the world's largest retailer, agreed to sell dozens of TerraCycle products in about 3,400 stores in a promotion tied to Earth Day during the month of April.
If TerraCycle sold enough to land an extended deal with Walmart or another big retailer, the Trenton, New Jersey, company could turn its first profit this year. "The pressure is as high as I can think of," says founder Tom Szaky.
Along the way, Szaky (photo below) described how
Terracycle had to negotiate with Pepsi and Coke for the rights to use their bottle shapes. He also talked about bottling, sleeving, and capping thousands of bottles of liquid garden fertilizer by hand before opening a factory in New Jersey; about getting sued by Scott’s, the garden product company, for trade dress infringement; and about how Terracycle and its unique upcycling concept of turning packaging waste into consumer products—bags, kites, pencil cases--is taking off around the world. “We’re establishing ourselves in a new country about every six weeks,” he told his Packaging Summit audience.
Wal-Mart (NYSE:
WMT) could play a big role in helping Earth-friendly start-ups survive.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Terracycle, a small, private company that fashions products out of difficult-to-recycle packaging, is hoping that large retailers like Wal-Mart will take up its cause more consistently -- and help the tiny company finally turn a profit.
Wal-Mart carried Terracycle's wares during a promotion for last month's Earth Day. In one clever touch, the retailer stocked Terracycle's backpacks, crafted from
Kraft's Capri-Sun packages, next to the actual Capri-Sun beverages
