All those butts she collects don’t go to a landfill. As she said, you can recycle anything. Keep Brunswick-Golden Isles Beautiful sends them to TerraCycle, a company that melts them down to cast some low-grade plastic products such as shipping pallets, shipping peanuts and — get this — ashtrays.                

TerraCycle, a recycling company based in Trenton, New Jersey, is offering a new automotive parts recycling program for individuals, mechanics and auto repair shops. TerraCycle says the service, part of its Zero Waste Box collection program, is designed to reduce the number of items sent to landfills.

TerraCycle, a recycling company based in Trenton, New Jersey, is offering a new automotive parts recycling program for individuals, mechanics and auto repair shops. TerraCycle says the service, part of its Zero Waste Box collection program, is designed to reduce the number of items sent to landfills.

       

                    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.

My company, TerraCycle, has first-hand experience with some of these problems. In 2012, we partnered with Kenco, a leading producer of instant and ground coffee in the UK. The partnership developed on the heels of Kenco’s transition away from its glass jar package (highly recyclable) and toward a 97% lighter pouch package (non-recyclable).