There's an old saying that goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Nobody has proved that more true than Tom Szaky. Szaky went from being a political refugee to a Princeton college student to the head of a rapidly growing company called TerraCycle, an "upcycling" company that turns garbage into new products. And he's only 27 years old. His company is at the forefront of turning trash into treasure, of making people more environmentally aware, and of using recycling as a way of helping society. His latest project is called The Brigades, a collaboration with major companies to get people to recycle and help raise money for worthwhile causes such as public schools and non-profit organizations.

TerraCycle's program benefiting nonprofits and schools The company collects what is typically nonrecyclable waste, such as candy and snack wrappers, pens, coffee bags and toothpaste tubes, from consumers, as well as recyclable items such as cell phones, plastic containers and more. It uses the trash to make new products sold at major retailers including Target, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Consumers who make the effort to get their trash to TerraCycle earn monetary rewards that go to nonprofits of their choice. Some manufacturers, such as skin care products maker Aveeno, even encourage consumers to send their brands' empty product containers to TerraCycle for repurposing.

Terracycle Brigades This is a really neat program which collects trash items like cereal bags, candy bars and drink pouches, and creates useful products with them.  The school gets 2 cents for each item.  Klem North Elementary School reports in its September newsletter that the school collected 2000 Capri Sun pouches last year, kept them out of the landfill and netted $40 for their school.

Incentive programs aim to spread environmental awareness to more-mainstream consumers \ TerraCycle's program benefiting nonprofits and schools The company collects what is typically nonrecyclable waste, such as candy and snack wrappers, pens, coffee bags and toothpaste tubes, from consumers, as well as recyclable items such as cell phones, plastic containers and more. It uses the trash to make new products sold at major retailers including Target, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Consumers who make the effort to get their trash to TerraCycle earn monetary rewards that go to nonprofits of their choice. Some manufacturers, such as skin care products maker Aveeno, even encourage consumers to send their brands' empty product containers to TerraCycle for repurposing.

Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer were on the scene with their worm-based invention in 2001.  They fed organic waste from the dining hall to worms, then liquefied the excrement to make compost tea that was stored in used soda bottles [2].  Those bottles were collected on campus.  In 2002, they planned on expanding their work to other businesses by collecting their waste.  Szaky discovered that they had created the world's largest continuous flow reactor [3]. I was watching Garbage Moguls one night on National Geographic channel. They were featuring an all-weekend marathon on TerraCycle. The first night I watched, I was hooked. Their crew went all out! At the time of viewing, they were expanding into retailing after years of working with other companies to sell their products. The crew was having a small difficulty adapting to the new expansion and Tom Szaky brought them into his office. In particular, he spoke to two girls whom he delegated the responsibility to run the store. During an approximate 15 minutes chat, he highlighted his concerns and offered solutions. He would follow up with a visit to the retail store and work further with those two girls. The result was a dedicated team of girls who figured out how to get creative.

Tom Szaky, a 28-year-old wunderkind from Canada, wants you to send him your garbage, and he’ll pay the shipping. Oh, and he also wants to make a lot of money and save the world by taking unrecyclable waste like chip bags and juice pouches and turning them into new products like backpacks, kites, coolers and clocks. Now he and his company, TerraCycle, take tons of hard-to-recycle plastics and other waste collected from collection “brigades” formed in schools, churches businesses and service organizations and turns them into products sold at Walmart and Target. They pay the shipping for articles like shopping bags, used pens, whatever, and pay 2 cents per unit to a charity on behalf of the collecting organization. All of it is organized through the company Web site, terracycle.net. The feel-good business model has worked with giant companies like Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay and Kimberly-Clark, who pitch the program on their packaging. Walmart and Target also have joined up, setting up collection points and selling products.

The wonderful people at the Tillicum Subway have allowed Tillicum Elementary to place a collection bin for empty chip bags at their location on Union Ave. Please help support Tillicum Elementary and Subway, while staying green and recycling! For each bag collected, Tillicum Elementary can upcycle through TerraCycle to receive $.02 and keep everyday trash out of the landfill. This program is helping the students learn about caring for the environment by getting involved and recycling!

What excited me about my daughter’s project was her description “Inspired by Terracycle“. My daughter’s familiarity with Terracyle comes from items we have been sent to review for our blogs.

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.

Every snack bag, baby diaper, candy bar wrapper that goes into the trash, is a story waiting to be told.  The question is, will the story be a negative one documented by a critic or a positive one created by you? If the product you market is made from non-recyclable material, it’s getting easier to convert that negative into a positive story.  A company called Terracycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  is helping CPG brands like Frito Lay and Mars turn their waste into upcycled products like speakers.  These re-birth stories are not only good for the planet, but a golden opportunity for business (as evidenced by Terracycle’s success <http://www.spider-topihitam.com/tom-szaky-of-terracycle-shares-secrets-to-success.html> ). Founded in 2001 by a 19 year old Princeton University freshman named Tom Szaky, TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of non-recyclable waste material.  With over 50 products available at major retailers like Walmart and Target, TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world.  Every month it gives $100,000.00 in $0.02 donations and has are over 8.5 million people in the U.S. actively collecting waste to create its upcycled products.

While some entrepreneurs discover their business plans unintentionally contain excrement, Tom Szaky's was designed around the material. Worm dung, in fact. Inspired by the success his friends had using red wiggler worms to process compost, Szaky felt there could be a business in commercially producing and distributing a product he would call ‘Worm Poop'. Emboldened by taking fifth place in the Princeton Business Plan Contest, he quit Princeton after two years to form TerraCycle and devote himself to delivering Worm Poop to households everywhere. THE SMELL OF SUCCESS With $20,000 — the proceeds of Szaky's bank accounts and credit cards — he purchased a worm gin and began shovelling Princeton University's food waste into it to feed an ever-growing colony of worms. A worm can consume twice its body weight each day, so Szaky was soon up to his knees in product. Committed to a fully sustainable offering, he packaged his prized Worm Poop in paper bags and took it to gardening stores inviting them to stock it. The response was that the product looked good, but the aroma was not consumer compatible.