Students at Oakmont Regional High have raised money selling craft items like bracelets made from soda can tabs. They also have an account with TerraCycle and collect 2 cents for every snack wrapper they turn in.
"That's our cash cow," said Archangelo. She said the school has embraced the program and every classroom has a box to collect wrappers for chips, granola bars, yogurt, along with glue sticks and tape dispensers. Club members spend a lot of hours sorting, folding and stacking the empty plastic wrappers.
Kubiak has placed four cigarette butt collection buckets in the outdoor smoking areas of Christkindlmarkt with a sign that says, "Make your butt useful." Smokers have responded and the buckets were brimming with butts last week.
Kubiak will send the butts he collects to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that specializes in finding ways to recycle items that previously were only sent to landfills. It launched the cigarette recycling initiative in the United States last month, company spokeswoman Lauren Taylor said.
El concurso del aula verde que dio comienzo este curso, está teniendo muy buena acogida. Dado que las aulas no están asignadas a los grupos, sino a las asignaturas, la idea ha cambiado hacia labores de reciclaje de diferentes materiales. Así, se han asignado puntuaciones en función del tipo de material recolectado. Como podéis ver en las tablas y gráficas que hay más abajo, las labores de recogida de materiales reciclables está siendo todo un éxito.
Sustainable packaging: The reduction by 0.56 ounce in one of Honest Tea’s cartons resulted in the conservation of 354,000 pounds of material, not to mention the decreased fuel consumption needed to haul all those drinks from plant to store. Those incrementally smaller cartons, which encased the Honest Tea’s drink pouches for kids, was the equivalent of the amount of trash that 300 people produce in one year. As for those pouches, Honest Tea partnered with TerraCycle to upcycle them into consumer products.
Tom Szaky, 30, is the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Inc., one of the world’s foremost leaders in eco-capitalism, recycling and upcycling. In 2006, Inc Magazine named TerraCycle “The Coolest Little Startup in America.” That same year Szaky was named the “Number-One CEO in America Under 30.”
Szaky came to the U.S. in 2001 when he matriculated as a Princeton University freshman. In 2002, he took a leave of absence to dedicate himself full-time to starting TerraCycle, which began as a two-man outfit in a dorm room in Princeton.
Today, TerraCycle runs packaging reclamation and post-consumer waste solution programs for major CPG companies, such as Kraft Foods, Nestle, L'Oreal, Mars, GSK, Kimberly-Clark Professional and many more. TerraCycle has expanded these recycling and upcycling fundraisers — which pay schools and non-profits to collect used packaging and products — into 20 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the UK, Ireland, Israel and Turkey. In 2010, TerraCycle was named the 288th fastest growing privately held company in America in Inc Magazine’s annual listing, the Inc 500. In four years of running free recycling programs, TerraCycle has collected over 3 billion units of waste and donated over $4 million to schools and non-profits. In 2012, TerraCycle is projecting roughly $15 million in revenue.
Conrad Kubiak, an environmentally-conscious smoker, hates the sight of cigarette butts littering sidewalks, parking lots and roadways.
"It makes me sick," he said.
So now the well-known drum vendor, a regular at Musikfest and Christkindlmarkt in Bethlehem, is taking matters into his own hands. The merchant is collecting cigarette butts in sand-filled buckets this year at the popular holiday market so that they can be recycledinto plastic lumber, shipping pallets, lawn furniture and ash trays.
Kubiak has placed four buckets in the outdoor smoking areas of Christkindlmarkt with a sign that says, "Make your butt useful." Smokers have responded and the buckets were brimming with butts last week.
Kubiak will send the butts he collects to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that specializes in finding ways to recycle items that previously were only sent to landfills. It launched the cigarette recycling initiative in the United States last month, company spokeswoman Lauren Taylor said.
One man’s trash is another’s treasure — and Tom Szaky is living proof.
The Hungarian native’s fascination with trash goes back a long way. While studying at Princeton, he and his mates cultivated a huge worm farm, which they fed with cafeteria waste. They then sold the resulting Worm Poop (very effective fertilizer, or so we’ve heard) in bottles they’d found in the trash. It was a win-win: they made money, and the project was environmentally friendly too.
Fast forward to 2012, and Tom, as the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Inc, one of the world’s foremost leaders in eco-capitalism, recycling and upcycling, was named #1 CEO in America Under 30 by Inc. Magazine.
Today, with a projected $15 million in revenue and clients like Kraft Foods, Nestle, L’Oreal, Mars, GSK and Kimberly-Clark Professional, TerraCycle is a post-consumer waste solution force to be reckoned with. They’re even teaming up with cigarette companies — talk about an odd couple!
TerraCycle isn’t just good business — it’s ‘good’ business. They’ve expanded their recycling and upcycling fundraisers, which pay schools and nonprofits to collect used packaging and products, into 20 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brasil, UK, Ireland, most EU countries, Israel and Turkey.
TerraCycle could arguably be named the world’s most innovative business. And after a long journey of invention, passion and hard work, TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky, 30, is certainly in the running for world’s most innovative young businessman. CL chatted with him about his road to success, his take on internships and how to achieve your dreams.
TerraCycle began over 10 years ago in the dorm room of then Princeton University freshman Tom Szaky from—surprisingly—worm poop. The idea sparked over Princeton’s fall break when Tom visited some friends in Canada who were using worm poop as fertilizer. He began harvesting his own worm poop after returning to campus.
“When I saw a lot of food on campus being thrown out, we decided to use the garbage to feed worms and create a potent fertilizer from worm compost,” he said.
