Along comes TerraCycle to provide me with just one more project to consume time and mind. However, this one is good for the planet and contributes to charity as well.  So it can't be all bad to be obsessed, right?  TerraCycle makes eco-friendly products from lots of  different non-recyclable waste materials and these products are quite affordable.  Sure, you can take your plastic, glass and aluminum containers to your local station or leave on your curb to go to the recycler... but what about those potato chip bags, cookie wrappers, tape dispensers?  Now you have a much more attractive alternative to dropping them at the local landfill.  Not only does this help the planet but TerraCycle will "Pay" you for your work by contributing to your charity of choice.  And on top of that, you can purchase these way-cool products from TerraCycle.

TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  turns waste into profitable products. It’s an awesome business that embodies the idea of a sustainable economy, as it creates a market for products made from trash. TerraCycle began with two freshmen at Princeton University, Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer. Basically, they sold worm castings (fertilizer) in a wasted soda bottle. They took food waste from their school dining hall, fed it to their friendly worms, and voila, a commodity to be sold. This packaging of dining hall-sourced fertilizer in junk plastic bottles continued to sell, and eventually TerraCycle fertilizer was being sold at Home Depot and Whole Foods. Now, TerraCycle has expanded to include purses, bags, fences, and boxes–all made from trash.

Around here we are doing our best to minimize waste, buying things with less packaging, using more cloths than paper towels to clean up, and frankly, eating the kind of food that doesn’t come wrapped in plastic (amen?) but there will always be left overs. The food we feed OBaby’s when we’re traveling comes in pouches. Yes for heaven’s sake we eat chips from time to time. And cereal. But TerraCycle came up with innovative and adorable ways to reuse whatought to be waste. I absolutely love this idea. TerraCycle diverts packaging waste from landfills and helps raise consumer awareness about reducing, reusing and recycling.  By encouraging people to rethink ‘what is waste,’ TerraCycle is making it simple for consumers to have a positive impact on the environment. YOU can actually be on the recycling end of the equation by sending them your used packaging, including empty baby food pouches to be upcycled into baby-related items such as diaper wallets, bibs, backpacks and totes. Neat, huh? Participation is free and all shipping costs are paid.

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  when you have kids, you tend to start thinking about things you may not have before. like garbage, landfills and what part you can do to help said kids have a better place to live long after we are gone. going green is such a big part of every day life these days (or at least, it should be – even small steps help). so i was thrilled to hear from TerraCycle and jumped on the opportunity to help them spread their mission. TerraCycle is a small company who takes non-recyclable waste (and pays 2 cents per piece to charity) and turns them into upcycled and repurposed eco-friendly items. they take the things that most of us throw in the trash, because we can’t throw it in the recycle bin, and make pencil pouches, binders, tote bags, shower curtains and picture frames – just to name a few. think capri suns, doritos, skittles and other packaging. they even take soda bottles and remake them into containers for dog shampoo and garden fertilizer.

In the second half of the show, Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle, joins John and Mike to talk about how his company is solving the problem of non-recyclable waste. In America alone, TerraCycle has 10.1 million people collecting waste — about 3 million pounds a day! — to convert into consumer products. TerraCycle converts everything from organic waste to plastic juice pouches into like-new products, in turn creating a whole reuse market that previously did not exist. “About 80% of the products we buy are not recyclable, and those are the ones we focus on creating solutions for,” Szaky says. He notes that TerraCycle has about 70,000 collection points — growing by about 500 a day — in countries around the world.

“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!’

As a fan of the cereal and helping the environment – I’m quite excited about this little tid-bit of news. Malt-O-Meal are those wonderful people that make Tootie Fruities and Marshmellow Matey cereals as well as a range of other flavors. Last week, Malt-O-Meal announced that it was teaming up with those green-friendly TerraCycle folks to help keep more cereal bags out of landfills. To do that – they are setting up ‘brigades’ in schools all over the US where students are able to get together and collect the bags to raise money for their school. Bags stay out of bins, TerraCycle recycles them into great new products (like backpacks) and Malt-O-Meal donates money to schools.

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.