For Dylan Balcom, saving the planet is important enough to get involved in the most hands-on – and entrepreneurial – way he can.     “Not every 13-year-old boy drops off a box of trash to a UPS store,” the Charlestown teen admits with a wry grin. He’s started a program at his school to collect non-recyclable trash he sends to TerraCycle, a company based in New Jersey that donates 2 cents to Charlestown Middle School’s student council for each piece of waste.     The company uses the trash as the base materials of different products. Dylan has an impressive collection of these “upcycled” goods, which include lunch boxes and school supplies and often bear the logo of the snack company that produced the original, discarded packaging.     Dylan’s sister Alexis Balcom, 18, remembers discovering the program last year, the summer before Dylan started 6th grade.     “Mom and I were going back-to-school shopping and we found these folders that were made out of Lay’s (potato) chip bags,” she said. “I remember thinking it was perfect for Dylan because he was so interested in recycling and the environment.”     The folder had the company’s contact details on the back. “We spent that entire night surfing the website and setting up the account, and I just remember that he was really excited,” Alexis said.

Toronto-native Tom Szaky (pronounced Zack-ee) has been spinning trash into gold since 2002, when he founded Terracycle with a friend out of his Princeton University dorm room. It started with selling worm food in used pop bottles, but soon transformed into turning waste into backpacks, picture frames, binders, pencil cases and more. All of these products branded with the logos of the same companies that produced the waste to make them. Would you buy a backpack made from stitched together Capri Sun pouches, or a three-ring binder composed of M&M wrappers? This is all stuff that can't be recycled, but with Terracycle's innovative "upcycle" technique Szaky is able to have waste producing companies foot the bill for garbage collection, while partnering with other expert product manufacturers who substitute their normal building materials with Terracycle's scientifically manipulated garbage. To learn how he does it, check out part one of our interview. Read on to get inside Szaky's own entrepreneurial DNA and learn how he turned his most devastating failures into his greatest successes. What made you believe you could actually make quality products out of garbage? You just do it. You just try. You take a leap of faith. You say, "I'm not going to discuss it anymore, I'm not going to theorize over it, I'm not going to do an academic paper on it, I'm going to simply do it. Then what happens is you start doing it and then you start screwing up. In the process of screwing up you realize what you need to do differently to make it successful. That has basically been the guiding principle of Terracycle ever since we began: Just try and then learn from the mistakes. We've had more mistakes than we've had successes, but then you focus and grow the successes and that's how you have a successful business.

Check out our food wrapper clothing featured in Green Design!

Er bringt mit seiner Firma Terracycle den Amerikanern das Wiederverwerten bei. Tom Szaky wird bereits mit dem Facebook-Gründer verglichen. Jetzt will er auch den deutschen Markt aufrollen. Dort trifft TerraCycle allerdings auf ein bereits etabliertes Recycling-System; eine Herausforderung, die Szaky bereit ist, anzunehmen.

So there I was, happily munching away on a bag of peanut butter M&Ms when I noticed a strange recycling symbol on the edge of the bag. It wasn’t the usual symbol I’m so used to seeing on recyclable items and there was no number anywhere on it. I thought to myself: “What the heck is this and how does it fit into the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle plan? A quick web search later and I’m at Terracycle.net. Here’s what they had to say about themselves. “TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collection programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash.”

When: Saturday, March 26 <http://independent.com/events/2011/mar/26/> , 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Where: SBCC <http://independent.com/places/sbcc/> , 721 Cliff Dr., Santa Barbara Cost: $5 Age limit: All ages Categories: Citizen's Alert <http://independent.com/events/search/?category=90> , Special Events <http://independent.com/events/search/?category=68> Description: SBCC Center for Sustainability "Cities As the Solution" Series: Waste & Recycling for a Better World March 25 & 26 Evening Talk, March 25, 7-9:30pm 2011 Keynote Speaker, Albe Zakes from TerraCycle, Inc. SBCC Campus, Fe Bland Auditorium, West Campus Admission $5 ~ All Day Saturday Event, March 26, 9am - 4pm Morning Plenary/Afternoon Break-Out Sessions with: Albe Zakes of TerraCycle; Nikhil Arora from BTTR Ventures; & Author, Janet Unruh Admission, $30 general/$20 Students SBCC Campus, East Campus         Meet the young eco-entrepreneurs who can change the way you think about trash.  And those who can help you understand recycling, why we must, and how we can.  Please join the Santa Barbara City College Center for Sustainability as it continues its "Cities As the Solution" series with "Waste & Recycling for a Better World" on March 25 & 26. The event starts on Friday evening with keynote speaker Albe Zakes, VP Marketing from TerraCycle, Inc., a company that makes useful products from garbage and is now at the forefront of the eco-capitalist movement.  Zakes will share the entrepreneurial adventure he and TerraCycle company founder Tom Szaky have experienced together as they created a company that's good for people, good for profits, and good for the environment.  A follow-up event takes place on Saturday March 26 beginning with a morning plenary session, followed by afternoon break-outs that includes 3 dynamic speakers in the world of Waste & Recycling: Albe Zakes, 25 year-old Global VP/Media from TerraCycle, Inc., the world's leading 'upcycling' company, which converts waste materials into eco-friendly, affordable products available at major retailers worldwide.  TerraCycle upcycles traditionally non-recyclable waste, including drink pouches, chip bags, tooth brushes and many more. TerraCycles innovative "Brigades" programs encourage community organizations to participate in trash retrieval while earning cash.  Paying out more than a million dollars last year alone, the Brigade programs are partially funded by corporate sponsors like KRAFT, Starbucks, and Mars.

• Colorful, functional boombox
• Upcycled from waste candy wrapper material
• Universally compatible with Ipods, Mp3 players, cd players, computers, and more!
• Runs on your devices power supply
• Made by TerraCycle, the ultimate eco-friendly brand!

Sustainability is a vital ingredient in the effort to preserve our planet. That’s why TerraCycle has teamed up with Merkury Innovations to bring you a line of speakers, boomboxes, and other accessories made possible by upcycling, a process that transforms materials that would otherwise go to waste into usable products. These foldable cardboard boomboxes are universally compatible and run on your device power supply. These boomboxes are packed and shipped flat to reduce pollution. Assembly is required. Dimensions: 11.82 x 1.18 x 9.84

Das erfolgreiche Start-Up-Unternehmen "Terracycle" versucht, den Amerikanern ihre Wegwerf-Mentalität auszutreiben: Wird man Mitglied, kann man Müll einsenden, aus dem Terracycle neue Produkte herstellt. Die kann man dann bei den großen Einzelhändlern im Land kaufen, unter anderem arbeitet Terracycle mit Wal-Mart oder auch Target zusammen. Jetzt kommt das Unternehmen nach Deutschland.

Garbage is irresistible to some of the most devoted eco-entrepreneurs. Already old hat are the many crafts industries producing purses and totes made out of tossed-out potato chip packages and bottle pop tops. Always looking for new notions, recycling firm TerraCycle has a 25,000-square-foot warehouse in New Jersey stuffed with old Skittles bags to fabricate into kites, Capri Sun juice pouches for backpacks and chip bags converted into coolers. The company makes pet toys and garments out of emptied dog food bags and is seeking constructive uses for expired pills, old pill bottles and razor blades.

In CEO Tom Szaky's office, the table are made of recycled dorrs, the walls are built of empty soda bottles, and an arsenal of Nerf weapons is kept close at hand. Shooting wars break out from time to time between the boss and a militia of fresh-faced TerraCyclers.