TerraCycle, a company that provides recycling solutions for spent coffee pods, has teamed up with Tassimo, Mars Drinks, Nespresso and Illy, but despite reaching out to the company multiples times, has not be able to develop a relationship with Green Mountain (Keurig).”

6. TerraCycle, a company that provides recycling solutions for spent coffee pods, has teamed up with Tassimo, Mars Drinks, Nespresso and Illy, but despite reaching out to the company multiples times, has not be able to develop a relationship with Green Mountain (Keurig).

Copper River Salons were already running a TerraCycle program to collect and recycle their personal care and beauty waste. At TerraCycle we provide free recycling programs (sponsored by various brands, like in this case Garnier) where we provide free shipping (via UPS) for your waste and will then reuse, upcycle or recycle the collected waste into something new.

Making millions from a business that recycles cigarette butts seems stranger than fiction. But Tom Szaky is an entrepreneur bent on making the impossible possible. Szaky's company TerraCycle has been described as “the coolest little start-up in America” and “the Google of garbage”. But don't describe this super eco-friendly outfit as just another recycling company.  

In America, customers can also utilize a mail-back program with the carrier UPS and drop the pods off at TerraCycle collection points that are located around the country.

Launching this month in Australia, TerraCycle, will help us turn previously unrecyclable waste into affordable, sustainable consumer products and materials.

We all try to do our part. If nothing else, most people will throw their recyclables into those yellow-lidded bins. But what do you do with non-recyclables? American start-up TerraCycle have saved 2.6 billion pieces of waste through their upcycling process which turns hard to recycle waste into new products. Founder and CEO Tom Szaky spoke with Tim Higgins about TerraCycle's unique brand of upcycling, which has now started up in Australia.

Waste isn’t always the sexiest topic. When I tell people about the green business that I run and what we do, for some it’s a topic they would prefer to avoid thinking about. Once something is placed in the rubbish – it’s out of sight out of mind. But our waste ends up somewhere, whether it is at the local tip or in our oceans.

Eco entrepreneur Tom Szaky believes some of the profits reported by the corporate world are absurd. His own company, TerraCycle, has given $20 million to charities over ten years and each year processes 50 million kilograms of waste. This year the company, with 120 staff, will bring in $25 million or more but will only keep 1% as profit.

TerraCycle has partnered with major brands Colgate and Natures Organics to recycle their “unrecyclable” post-consumer waste, and with Nespresso to expand their recycling program. Australians can now send in their previously difficult-to-recycle waste to TerraCycle to be recycled into sustainable consumer products and materials.