Global Recycling Company Expanding Headquarters in Capital City Trenton, N.J. – Mayor W. Reed Gusciora announced today the transfer of two vacant city lots on New York Ave to TerraCycle, a global waste innovation company located in 22 countries that is looking to expand its operations in the Capital City. A closing ceremony took place Aug. 30, 2021, right outside TerraCycle headquarters in Trenton. Mayor Gusciora was joined by TerraCycle Founder and CEO Tom Szaky, City Council Vice President Marge Caldwell-Wilson, Greater Trenton CEO George Sowa, and the new Trenton Director of Housing and Economic Development C. Andre Daniels. After growing rapidly during the pandemic and adding 150 jobs, TerraCycle is seeking additional space for its expanding team. As a major local employer, the City of Trenton has worked with TerraCycle to transfer two vacant lots on New York Ave adjacent to TerraCycle headquarters so it can continue to grow in the Capital City. A resolution authorizing the transaction was previously approved by City Council in September 2020. “TerraCycle has always been serious about its commitment to the Capital City, and its vision of repurposing recyclable materials worldwide speaks directly to Trenton’s industrial past,” said Mayor Gusciora. “This is one of many ways Trenton is working with its business community to help return underutilized properties to the tax rolls and promote further employment and economic activity.” “We’ve been proud to call Trenton our home for almost two decades and by working with the city and Mayor Gusciora, we look forward to continuing to do so for decades to come,” said Tom Szaky, TerraCycle Founder and CEO. “Anyone looking to locate their business in the Northeast should absolutely consider Trenton as a place to put down their roots.” “I am very excited about the expansion of this innovative Green waste management company that has a strong commitment to the City of Trenton,” said Council Vice President Caldwell-Wilson. “I hope that they can continue to expand their facility in Trenton’s North Ward. TerraCycle hires local, is committed to the community, and welcomes our artists to apply their talents on their building. These are the types of employers that we need to invest in our city.” “TerraCycle is a global leader in sustainability that remains committed to Trenton and the surrounding communities,” said George Sowa, CEO of Greater Trenton.  “TerraCycle does well by doing good and the world is a better and more sustainable place as a result.” About TerraCycle TerraCycle is an innovative waste management company with a mission to eliminate the idea of waste. Operating nationally across 21 countries, TerraCycle partners with leading consumer product companies, retailers and cities to recycle products and packages, from dirty diapers to cigarette butts, that would otherwise end up being landfilled or incinerated. In addition, TerraCycle works with manufacturers to integrate hard to recycle waste streams, such as ocean plastic, into their products and packaging. Its new division, Loop, is the first shopping system that gives consumers a way to shop for their favorite brands in durable, reusable packaging. TerraCycle has won over 200 awards for sustainability and has donated over $44 million to schools and charities since its founding more than 15 years ago and was named #10 in Fortune magazine’s list of 52 companies Changing the World. To learn more about TerraCycle or get involved in its recycling programs, please visit www.terracycle.com.

The Jersey Fresh Jam held its 16th year at TerraCycle Inc, hosting various hip-hop activities from breakdancing to a rap stage for Trenton artists to perform and using the building canvas for various Graffiti artists to put work out in the world.   “Since 2005, the event has grown from a small, humble event into one the most respected celebrations of Hip Hop culture on the east coast.” The website explains. “At the twilight of every summer, aerosol artists from far and wide converge to adorn the walls of TerraCycle INC with their signature masterpieces, while local and regionally known emcees, bands, and DJs provide the soundtrack for the day’s festivities.”   Leon Rainbow, a well-known artist and founder of the Jersey Fresh Jam, explained that it’s invite-only for the artists, but all are welcome to come and enjoy the festival.   “It’s kind of invite-only…as far as participating,” Rainbow said. “We try to present the best graffiti artists, MCs, DJs, and break dancers from this area, all the way up from DC, [to] Virginia, Philly New York, [and] all over New Jersey. We had artists out here from Texas, so you know we really tried to present the best-skilled artists that we have.”   The festival was rained out Saturday, though Sunday saw crowds of people and artists attend and participate in the events. Derrick Goal, an artist from Delaware, explained that this event is for everyone. “Even if someone doesn’t know anything about graffiti, I don’t think anyone is going to have a bad time here. I think you are always going to be impressed by the work that is done,” Noel said.   A breakdancing competition was hosted where the winner receives 800$, as well as music artists were able to hand out their CDs to listeners to gain a following from the event.   Rainbow explained that graffiti artists are professionals chosen purely for the skill, keeping within a long-held craft tradition. “When I came up in hip hop, things were kind of different, where you had to prove yourself. You had to do a certain amount of work in the street, but you also had to get to a certain level before you were accepted to be a part of an event like this, and then that’s we try to keep that tradition going.”   Trenton Health and St. Francis Medical Center helped sponsor the event and handed out COVID-19 vaccines to those who wanted to receive the vaccination. The next event will be in August of 2022.  

Tom Szaky, CEO and Founder of TerraCycle and Loop, articulates how multi-stakeholder partnerships are essential in driving action and innovation in the reuse space.

 

Reuse is back in a big way. Not only are stores accepting BYO shopping totes and refillable mugs again, there’s a burgeoning consumer demand for refill schemes for consumables — food & beverage, home and laundry care, cosmetics, and other products that get used up quickly. This trend towards durable packaging offers new solutions to the global waste crisis, and a new way to do business.

 

The history of single-use

 

Here, I use the term “new” somewhat loosely, as using product containers more than once was intuitive and necessary for most of civilisation, but for the last 70 years, we’ve been focused and reliant on the models of single-use and disposability for products.

 

Trace it back to mass production and material advances perfected during the first and second World Wars. Freed up in peacetime, manufacturers and plastics producers pivoted to consumers, working with brands, retailers, and marketers to create value propositions for disposability and a petrochemical material — both new concepts for the general public.

 

Single-use packaging for consumables in particular drove access to more products than ever before, giving rise to the convenience market and a throwaway culture for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) and the planned obsolescence of products once made to last (such as clothing, home appliances, and electronics) now designed to break or fall out of trend.

 

Today, the world sees the consequences of this linear economy taking resources to make products, such as packaging for FMCGs, and sending them to become waste. In the few years preceding COVID-19, the magnitude of the plastic waste crisis known to scientists and researchers for decades became a part of the public consciousness; even as the pandemic dominated global attention, awareness of environmental issues remained high and even increased.

 

Consumers now understand they pay several times for their products — for the product itself, the packaging it's in, public and private waste management programs, and loss to natural capital of the planet — while businesses have externalized these negatives for profit, and governments allow them to do so.

 

Necessary Disruption

 

A pivot to reusable packaging would be challenging, and a disruption to a business model that has so long served to create jobs, drive access to goods, and generate growth. Yet, there is a huge business case for leading the charge on demonstrating reuse models are viable, practical and capable of generating added value across the economy.

 

A multi-stakeholder partnership approach

 

Nearly all of these challenges are mitigated by the very essential ingredient that made single-use possible in the first place: multi-stakeholder partnership. The World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Consumption looks to advance the frameworks to encourage the scalability of reuse through its Consumers Beyond Waste initiative, which brings together leading private, public and civil society sector actors committed to creating access to innovative consumption models at scale; I myself am co-chair of its steering committee on behalf of my companies TerraCycle and Loop.

 

In its first year, the coalition focused on developing a multi-stakeholder perspective on 1) the economic, environmental, and social determinants of integrated reuse systems, 2) developing a “playbook” for cities to test and enable these systems, and 3) advancing efforts to develop sets of shared guidelines for reuse in the key areas of health and safety, and design.

 

As part of this, their recent report Future of Reusable Consumption Models presents a framework for a wide reuse system, breaking down six key aspects that determine the ability of models to succeed economically and operationally: delivery-model efficiency, consumer experiences, technology advancement, regulation, cultural shift, and demonstration of improvement. All of these are indicators of scalability, and none can be achieved by working alone.

 

Thus, it cannot be emphasised enough that no one group or sector can bring reuse to life; buy-in and application is needed by manufacturers, retailers, and brands in order to drive innovation, minimize risk, demonstrate and report on value, and share learnings and resources across the value chain. Our global Loop™ model aims to do this for packaging reuse with the convenience and affordability so long driven by single-use models.

 

Loop is today in an exciting growth phase as it launches in new markets around the world (most recently Japan), and building upon the success of in-store space at Carrefour in Europe and Japan, will soon pilot at retail locations in the United States and the UK. Guests will soon be able to purchase products in durable containers and drop off their empties at participating stores.

 

Consumer confidence is key

 

Over the past couple of years we’ve learned that buy-in at retail is essential, as is the marketing and sales support for the CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands on Loop and the establishment of trust with end-users, the customers of our partners. We’ve also learned consumers take to reuse if they are confident about the safety and function of the product and don’t have to change much about their own behaviour, except for an improved experience.

 

For example, a brand-name shampoo bottle on Loop contains the same trusted formula consumers love and can be conveniently “tossed” in the same store it was purchased; through a third-party verified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for our reuse platform, both the ecommerce and retail models respectively come out environmentally superior to alternatives in as few as three uses. Consumers gain the functional benefits of a better looking container, and the emotional and social benefits of choosing a more sustainable way to consume.

 

Challenges of cost for businesses rule the secondary challenges around lack of infrastructure, uncertainty about financial viability, and questions about how to attain adequate brand differentiation, while governments must contend with a lack of funding for public programmes and infrastructure changes that incentivise waste reduction, so proving value creation through measured ROI (i.e. environmental LCAs, consumer insights, sales lift and forecasting) is key to driving emerging models forward.

 

With the work we continue to do with Loop, our partners and vendors, and alongside the members of Consumers Beyond Waste, who include NGOs such as World Wildlife Fund, thought-leaders Closed Loop Partners and IDEO, municipal bodies such as City of Philadelphia and New York City Mayor's Office of Sustainability, and many Loop retailers including Kroger and Tesco, it’s our goal to bring reuse back, and inspire and support business in their ambitions to do the same.

By ISAAC AVILUCEA | iavilucea@trentonian.com | The Trentonian PUBLISHED: August 30, 2021 at 6:43 p.m. | UPDATED: August 30, 2021 at 8:45 p.m.   TRENTON — Tom Szaky takes the capital city’s waste and recreates. The TerraCycle chief executive officer’s company, which started out small and has now blossomed into a $25 million corporation with tentacles in 21 countries, embodies that adage about one person’s trash being another’s treasure.   Szaky’s latest project is turning two barren tracts of land, which the city transferred over to the recycling company Monday with Mayor Reed Gusciora’s stroke of a pen, into something “purposeful.”   “I try to look for value where it’s not intuitive,” Szaky told The Trentonian while giving a tour of his sprawling digs, an open-space maze of soda-bottle partitions, upcycled furniture and decor and blissfully graffitied walls. “I think Trenton’s a big metaphor of that. I think a lot of people look at Trenton and have negative thoughts. But I think that any situation, whether it’s a pile of garbage, whether it’s a city, or whatever metaphor, there’s phenomenal value, if you just twist it the right way and look at it from a different angle. And then it’s like, ‘Holy sh*t [look] how valuable it is.’”   People are looking forward to what the forward-thinking company, which originally began as a vermicomposting worm-poop fertilizer startup, comes up with on the plot of land, currently just a field of dreams, dotted with grass.   “They get to mow this now,” Gusciora joked with his feet planted in the soil. “We want TerraCycle to remain in the community.”   Council approved the transfer of the long-vacant plots at 101 and 103 New York Avenue back in September.   TerraCycle paid $2,000 for the lots, a fraction of the $10,800 accessed value of the land.   The lots were too small for development because they don’t meet minimum land requirements under the city’s zoning laws, according to the ordinance approved by council. But the plots provide enough space for the zany Szaky to do something with them. They could become a community garden or another creative space for Trenton’s artists to let loose, like they do each year on the walls of TerraCycle, which hosted its 16th annual graffiti jam over the weekend.   An outsize mural of smiling Trenton hero and two-time Tokyo Olympic gold medalist Athing Mu, created by artist Dean Innocenzi, now greets visitors outside the building.   The courtyard in the back opens up to a huge wall that looks like a green screen with TerraCyle painted across it in big, block letters.   Every wall is a canvas, no space unused and then later reused.   Part of what makes TerraCycle unique is that it’s always striving to recreate itself, like the products recycled from major corporations.   It’s the place where waste turns back into wonder.   And Szaky, a Hungarian immigrant and the only child of two medical doctors who dropped out of Princeton University as a sophomore to pursue his dream, and the people he surrounds himself with, see Picassos in almost everything.   Those include weird assemblages of wine-bottle corks, Clif bar wrappers and cigarette butts, used to create a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln that hangs in the company’s Republican Room.   Or the artist rendering of the Statue of Liberty, fashioned out of Colgate toothpaste tubes.   “I fell in love with garbage as a topic because it’s filled with all these crazy anomalies,” the 39-year-old CEO, sporting the dressed-down look of blue jeans and a blue T-shirt, said. “We live in a materialistic world, but isn’t it weird that everything we own will be the property of a garbage company? That’s crazy. And really think, everything. The floor. The shoes. The car. Everything, not just like the candy wrapper.”   Szaky left Hungary as a young boy following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.   His family bounced around for a bit as political refugees in Germany before getting asylum in Canada. He grew up and went to high school in Toronto, where he became infatuated with entrepreneurship and living out the American Dream.   When he first arrived in Newark, New Jersey, as a young college-bound student, he thought he was in the wrong place.   “I kid you not I went to the gate and said, ‘Did you misspell New York? What is Newark?’” Szaky said.   Szaky’s stay in the Ivy League, while instructive, was short-lived. He recalled being somewhat uninspired by the message his professor relayed in his intro economics class.   The lecturer asked students to ponder the purpose of business.   “The answer she was looking for was to maximize profit to shareholders,’ Szaky said. “And it felt like a very uninspired answer even though it was the way it’s defined. I wanted to try to create a business that put purpose first, whatever that purpose may be, but that it was good — that people would be happy for your existence.”   During a fall break to Montreal, Szaky noticed friends giving kitchen scraps to red worms and using their remnants to feed their plants.   Soon enough, that idea became Szaky’s obsession as he drained his savings and borrowed money from friends and family to create a worm poop conversion unit.   With the help of an investor, he rented office space on Nassau Street.   He dropped out of Princeton in 2003 to pursue his company full-time. Many thought he was “nuts” for leaving the pantheon of academia to strike out on his own.   “Totally. But I always wanted to build my own thing,” Szaky said.   As TerraCycle started to hit its groove — the worm poop fertilizer was on big-box store shelves, bringing in about $6 million in revenue and had just migrated to the bigger building it now occupies in Trenton — Szaky inverted his business model again.   “We shifted and put not the output as the hero but the input as the hero,” he said.   The company has continued to break outside of the box, with the addition of Loop, a radical way to solve the single-use waste problem that has garnered buy-in from the biggest brands in America like Haagan-Dazs and McDonald’s   “One thing he didn’t mention was they were one of Time’s most influential companies of 2021,” said George Sowa of Greater Trenton, “along with Apple and some of the other companies around the world.”   Szaky’s “fundamental waste innovation” doesn’t stop there.   He hopes in the near future to add a diagnostics to the arsenal, where air condition filters and dirty diapers are hauled off to labs and those samples used to generate reports for consumers on everything from air-quality to your child’s well-being.   “Your air condition filter has a sample of the crud in your air. Or your dirty diaper has a sample of your child’s fecal matter. And so in a year from now you’ll be able to buy services from some of the biggest brands that make those goods,” he said.

TRENTON, NJ (MERCER)–The City of Trenton and TerraCycle, a global waste innovation company located in 22 countries and headquartered in Trenton, N.J., celebrated the transfer of two vacant city lots to TerraCycle for use in expanding its operations in the Capital City this afternoon.   Mayor W. Reed Gusciora; Tom Szaky, Founder and CEO of TerraCycle; and George Sowa, Executive Director of Greater Trenton and Marge Caldwell-Wilson, North Ward Councilperson spoke at the signing.   After growing rapidly during the pandemic and adding 150 jobs, TerraCycle is seeking additional office and facility space for its expanding team. As a major local employer, the City of Trenton has worked with TerraCycle to transfer two vacant lots on New York Ave adjacent to TerraCycle headquarters so it can continue to grow in the Capital City. A resolution authorizing the transaction was previously approved by City Council.  

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