TerraCycle is in the business of making traditionally non-recyclable waste streams recyclable for the first time. We’ve had a great deal of success in accomplishing this, thanks in no small part to the amazing individuals, families, schools and countless other groups collecting waste through the many TerraCycle Brigade programs.

                    DANBURY, Conn. — Tom Szaky possesses all the usual entrepreneurial traits — obsessive, innovative, smart — but he works in a business that few others do, and in the process he is creating a new intersection of industry, recycling and even art.Szaky’s company, TerraCycle, makes money by reusing products that are normally not recycled, but instead are thrown away and later buried, incinerated or left by the side of the road, including items like potato chip bags and cigarette butts.

Anna Minns is General Manager of Terracycle Australia, a company dedicated to creating recycling solutions for just about anything. What’s involved in developing a recycling solution for “difficult” waste like the Nescafé capsules? More often than not, companies approach us about a solution for their product’s waste stream. Nescafé Dolce Gusto joined with TerraCycle to provide a second life for used Nescafé Dolce Gusto capsules, so Australians can now collect, store and ship their capsules from home or work for free. For the current Nescafé Dolce Gusto Capsule Brigade we do not collect any other brand of capsules, only Nescafé Dolce Gusto capsules. If consumers are interested in a particular waste stream we suggest they let their favourite brand know about TerraCycle’s work! We hope in time to be collecting more and more “unrecyclable” waste. Can goodwill be infectious enough for the majority of manufacturing companies to take responsibility for end of life of their product, or will they need to be pushed into it by legislation? As the circular economy is increasingly gaining traction in our region many companies are looking to circular solutions rather than linear solutions of ‘take, make, then dispose’. TerraCycle works with many major FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) companies, as well as small brands, to create a voluntary product stewardship scheme that diverts everyday consumer products and packaging that are difficult to recycle such as toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, coffee capsules and even cigarette butts, from landfill, and instead into new products creating circular solutions. The recycling system creates a collection model open to the public. Australia has one of the highest rates of waste generation per capita in the world and in fact, world waste is also expected to double by 2025. Government schemes and extended producer responsibility laws may be slow in coming to effect to deal with growing waste issues. TerraCycle’s solutions are readily available and the onus is on both brands to consider a solution to an increasing problem as well as consumers to use their buying power as a ‘vote’ for sustainability. What would you nominate as the most unlikely or surprising items that you have created recycling solutions for? Cigarettes, chewing gum, feminine hygiene products and nappies! TerraCycle has proven that (almost) anything can and should be recycled. Do you get to shovel rotting food to the worms occasionally? No. But we are offering a copy of Tom’s book “Revolution in a Bottle” for a Switch Report reader that outlines the origins of TerraCycle as a company turning worm poop into fertilizer! To win a copy of Revolution in a Bottle by Terracycle’s founder Tom Szaky, just sign up for our newsletter by midnight on Sunday 16 November, and you’ll be in the draw. If you are already on our mailing list you don’t need to do anything. You are automatically entered.

טום סזאקי, מייסד ומנכ"ל חברת המיחזור טרה סייקל, מייצג סוג חדש של איש עסקים: יזם חברתי-סביבתי שרוצה להציל את כדור הארץ מבלי להקריב את שורת הרווח. בראיון למוסף "הארץ" מסביר איל הפסולת שהתעשר מהפרשות תולעים מדוע העתיד שלנו נמצא בזבל

My hatred of waste is well-documented in this space.  And yet I have much to learn and much to go in this area.  Tom Szaky's "Revolution in a Bottle," which is about his firm, Terracycle, explains that trash is a modern Western phenomenon and that it imposes significant costs on the planet in the form of massive amounts of undegradable materials in our landfills and even in the middle of our oceans.  I am reminded of my brother-in-law's extended family's plantation in southwestern India, which is completely sustainable in that it requires no running water or electricity and generates no waste. In contrast to that, my family easily generates one or two trash cans' worth of trash, plus two or three bins of recyclables, every week.  Not to mention the trash I throw out at work or anywhere else.  I am spurred on by Aaron's new teacher, who has a "zero trash" policy in the classroom (there are no trash cans) and who teaches her students about composting.  I may never get to "zero trash," and my wife still needs some convincing on the composting, but I am more aware, and I am taking baby steps.  I hope you will too.

Another gloomy day in Chicago—I can’t wait to go to San Diego next week for the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s spring meeting! AND, I just booked flights to Rogers, Arkansas, for the Walmart SVN meeting and Expo. Though Dordan is not exhibiting this year, I am excited to see what other vendors are offering and get updated on Walmart’s sustainability initiatives! So I am about half way through TerraCycle CEO Tom Szacky’s book, “Revolution in a Bottle.” It is really, really good, and inspiring! I thoroughly suggest you get yourself a copy today! That which I like so much about his story is his awareness into the economic realities of the market place: one of his main arguments is that the majority of consumers will NOT pay more for a green product; while everyone wants to do well by the environment, few are willing to pay for it. His whole approach, therefore, is to be able to provide green products at a competitive price and performance as those currently on the market. And the best way to do that? Use what is considered waste as your feedstock. BRILLIANT.

Even the Ivy League isn't immune to dropouts. Tom Szaky -- a Canadian who didn't know that Princeton was in New Jersey until he got to campus -- left college after two years. Szaky was on fall break during freshman year in Montreal when he saw a bountiful weed (yes, that kind of weed) harvest that owed its success to worm and organic waste. The light bulb went off, and he began packaging worm waste in used soda bottles that later ended up on the shelves of Home Depot and Walmart. Over the next year, he would head home after class and work on his business, the way college basketball players head to the gym to work on their free throws. He didn't solicit help from professors and says the faculty was "hands-off" in that respect. By his sophomore year, TerraCycle was taking off -- he had a logo, a name and a diversified body of products -- and it was now or never. "I would have loved to stay in school, but TerraCycle was starting to grow and I was putting more time into it," says Szaky, 28, also a member of the AOL Small Business Board of Directors. "I took a semester off, which turned into a permanent leave." The business has evolved since 2003 -- kites made of Oreo wrappers and picture frames wrapped in bicycle chains, part of the company's "upcycling" line of products, helped catapult revenues to $7.5 million in 2009 -- but he still spends time on campus as a guest lecturer and thinks teaching could be a fun career down the road. For now, he's focused on waste, and he's able to indulge his inner dork with the science of composting. Looks like he didn't need that behavioral economics degree after all, much like other dropouts who felt the need to quit school and carpe diem. "I have nothing against school," says Szaky, author of Revolution in a Bottle. "TerraCycle was happening, and that was the decision at the moment."

Parents and kids at the K-2 school finished fifth in a statewide recycling contest sponsored by TerraCycle, a company started by a Princeton University dropout who sold organic “worm poop” fertilizer in used soda bottles and then branched out to make lunch bags, fences and other products from hard-to-recycle materials. TerraCycle partners with major brands to create products from packaging that otherwise might pose a public relations problem for them. The company was founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, then a 20-year-old freshman at Princeton. When his worm fertilizer idea only finished fourth in the Princeton Business Plan Contest, he left school to develop the concept and won a $1 million competition. He turned down the money to retain control of the company. TerraCycle now operates from a Trenton headquarters decorated by graffiti artists. The company has turned nearly 2 billion pieces of trash into a line of 246 recycled and “upcycled” products sold by the likes of Walmart and Whole Foods Market. More than $1.6 million has been generated for schools and charities. On Earth Day 2009, Tom Szaky published Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle is Redefining Green Business.

Named the No 1. CEO under thirty by Inc. magazine in 2006 for his innovative approach to fertilizer and recycled goods, in the two years that followed (2007-2009) Tom Szaky went on to write about 30 blogitles for Inc. and a book that surely has more than 30 pages – Revolution in a Bottle. Now it’s 2011 and he’s still under 30 but he’s worth at least 30 times 30 more than he was at the start of 2006. Tom, a Princeton drop-out, is a man on a mission to run a fully sustainable company. While he was still in his dorm room he was dreaming up TerraCycle, one of the fastest growing private companies named by Inc. magazine in 2009.