Spearheaded by science teacher Carole Andreazza, the middle school group is making its mark by donating recyclable items like juice packets to Terracycle, a Trenton-based group that creates products and plastics out of recyclables.

Há quatro anos, o consumidor brasileiro tem uma maneira de garantir que seus resíduos sejam reciclados, com a ajuda da startup americana TerraCycle, que abriu uma subsidiária no nosso país em 2009. Desde que chegou, a empresa afirma ter quadruplicado sua quantidade de clientes, desenvolvido serviços especializados com empresas locais e fechado um aporte com a Warehouse Investimentos.

A empresa líder mundial em logística reversa completa 4 anos de atividade no Brasil, firmando seu nome na e mostrando o quanto a logística reversa é um setor promissor no país. Fundada no Brasil em 2009, a empresa já ampliou quase quadruplicou a quantidade de clientes. No primeiro ano de operação, eram apenas duas empresas parceiras. Hoje são sete grandes conglomerados de diversos segmentos, entre elas Faber-Castell, Colgate-Palmolive, Suzano, L’Oreal e BRF. A participação também cresceu incrivelmente rápido: mais de 400.000 pessoas já coletaram aproximadamente 25 milhões de embalagens pós-consumo.

Embalagens laminadas de salgadinhos, escovas de dente e canetas usadas e até gomas de mascar e bitucas de cigarro. Encontrar uma destinação ambientalmente correta para resíduos que ninguém faz questão de reciclar - e fazer com que eles retornem, como matéria-prima, à indústria - tornou-se o desafio de empresas que se especializaram em lidar com resíduosque pareciam fadados a repousar eternamente nos aterros sanitários.

O que fazer com os nossos frascos de perfume, embalagens de maquiagem e potes de cremes, descartados após o uso? Difíceis de reciclar, os resíduos de plástico e de vidro geralmente têm como destino os lixeiros suburbanos. Para combater o acúmulo de lixo, a empresa TerraCycle, criada pelo americano Tom Szaky, propõe uma solução: transformar materiais coletados por colaboradores em produtos criativos.

TerraCycle is a social business, which means that we focus on the so-called triple bottom line: planet, people and profits. For us, this has meant creating a business model that involves capturing nonrecyclable waste — like chip bags or diaper packaging — before it goes to a landfill or incinerator and finding a way to recycle, upcycle or reuse it. Basically, we’re giving garbage a second life by creating a system for otherwise nonrecyclable waste to be recycled. Through sponsorship from more than 50 brand partners (L’Oréal, Kimberly-Clark) we are able to offer free shipping and a small donation (typically 2 cents per piece of waste received) to a school or organization of the collector’s choice. Today, we engage more than 35 million people in collecting this waste in 22 countries around the world. While our sales have grown every year for the past nine years — we finished 2012 with slightly less than $15 million in revenue — we just became profitable in 2011. We earned a small profit in 2012 as well. In my letter to the company, I wrote that our goal is to eliminate the very idea of waste: “This is a lofty goal that I believe is best executed via a for-profit platform. But I would like to underline that we do not exist for the sole purpose of profit.” Instead, I explained, profit is a tool we use to help us accomplish our purpose. But it can get complicated, and much depends on how a company is structured and financed. One challenge of trying to balance profits with a socially minded business can be the law. Perhaps the best example is the sale of Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield started the company in a renovated gas station in South Burlington, Vt. They were fair to their employees and their cows, they cared about the environment, and they used the business as a vehicle to raise awareness about social and environmental issues.

Building awareness about environmental concerns is one thing. Getting people to actually change their behaviors and become better stewards of the environment themselves is quite another, and much more difficult to accomplish as University of Illinois students in Ming Kuo's Environmental Psychology class learned. They worked in groups to evaluate programs that promote environmental sustainability and make recommendations for how the programs could improve their effectiveness. According to Kuo, the student groups were paired with actual clients, making the project not just an assignment for a grade, but a real-world problem to solve.

As I reflected on the end of 2012, I decided to write a letter to our more than a hundred employees around the world to discuss the role profits play at TerraCycle. TerraCycle is a social business, which means that we focus on the so-called triple bottom line: planet, people and profits. For us, this has meant creating a business model that involves capturing nonrecyclable waste — like chip bags or diaper packaging — before it goes to a landfill or incinerator and finding a way to recycle, upcycle or reuse it. Basically, we’re giving garbage a second life by creating a system for otherwise nonrecyclable waste to be recycled.

Cheryl Bertou and her 9-year-old son, who participate in TerraCycle's Brigade program, were featured on Rochester News. Cheryl effectively articulates what TerraCycle is all about in this two minute clip.