Nearly halfway through January, I’m still sorting out my resolutions. How about you? I wanted to come up with resolutions that are practical and viable, and will support not only TerraCycle, but my own habits and lifestyle in general. What can I do that melds TerraCycle, my house, and a recycling mission overall? Here’s what I’ve come up with so far: 1. Compost better, and compost more. It’s hard to keep an effective compost bin going when I’m traveling and don’t eat at home much. But in order to be able to maximize composting and really use it to make a difference, I need to step it up. Compostable packaging, which is beginning to become all the rage, is actually difficult to compost if a compost pile isn’t well managed and maintained. I want to be able to compost the compostable, and that will take my dedication. Don’t have the time or the room to compost on your own? Check out this guide on local sites that will do it for you: Earth 911’s Recycling Center search (you can search “compost”) or Findacomposter.com.

The amount of waste generated by U.S. consumers leaps by 25% around the holidays, bumping our yearly output of garbage up from 199.9 million pounds to 249.9 million, based on calculations from the EPA’s 2010 measurements. A whopping one fifth of our annual trash load is produced during the holidays, making this not only the most wonderful time of the year, but also the most wasteful.With people buying more products in more packaging every day, fiscally, this is a bonanza–a gold mine, really.

Today’s post is by our great friend and sustainability rock star, Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle. Check it out and tell us what you think–we’ll pass your comments directly along to Tom and team! December and January are always a time for New Year’s Resolutions that are more often than not only kept for about a month. It happens to the best of us. Nothing else really “changes” when the clock and calendar flip to 12:00am on January 1, so why would it be any easier to actually change our habits then? It’s not, really, but it is a good excuse, and a good time to all make changes at once – which is helpful because you can work together on new habits as a group.

A few weeks ago, we asked Bag The Box fans what they’d like to ask TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky in a no-holds-barred Q&A. “Trash-talk” ensued! Here are Tom’s answers to your trashy questions: When I started TerraCycle ten years ago, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. On an entrepreneurial level, I did have some idea, but on an eco-level, it was not so. As I became more involved in upcycling and recycling, I learned more about trash than I ever realized I would! TerraCycle now processes trash from Logitech electronics to Mars candy wrappers and donates an incredible amount of money to charity every year thanks to our collection Brigade participants. Since we have lots of programs, and lots to recycle, people have lots of questions. The Malt-O-Meal and TerraCycle social networks teamed together to ask you all for your questions, and we did our best to choose some good ones.

As recycling has gained ground and moved to the forefront of concern in the past few years with the overflowing landscapes across the country and world, the innovative space of end-of-life processes has been growing. TerraCycle is no longer alone in this space, and we’re glad for the growth and attention that recycling solutions are receiving. We’re often asked what our greatest challenges are, and we often respond that keeping recycling at the forefront of concern and seeing that “green” doesn’t become a short-lived trend that peters out in the next few years. From the recent trends I’ve seen in the packaging industry, I think recycling is growing stronger, especially with the recent merger of Recyclebank and Waste Management’s Greenopolis.

TerraCycle started as a project in my dorm room, a bunch of friends getting together every once in a while over a beer and talking about our first product, plant food made out of worm waste . I guess I was officially the chief executive and given that my friends didn’t get a salary — no one did back then — they were perhaps best described as interns. Back then, no one would have thought twice about the chief executive having a romantic relationship with one of the “interns.” We were friends, we were the same age, and the company wasn’t even incorporated. Today, of course, I suspect the reaction would be very different if I were to have a similar relationship with an intern — even if we were friends and even if we were the same age (which, surprisingly, is still often the case).

Halloween is about disguise, and a lot of what we do here at TerraCycle deals with disguising trash, making it more appealing and actually useful! Halloween, and the following holiday season, are great times to really rethink what we do with our trash. Halloween provides the incentive and some extra encouragement to start getting creative with your trash. It’s always exciting to see what kids come up with when they use their creativity – we just held a “Box That Rocks” contest, in which participants designed TerraCycle collection boxes. I saw monsters, trains, robots – everything! Students did a great job of disguising ugly bins into something cool for the cafeteria or school hallway, which reminded me of when TerraCycle was just getting started and I was able to go to school and work hands on with kids, teaching them how to upcycle.

The first waste I used to create a product was worm poop (which is a great organic fertilizer), and when I was desperate for an affordable way to package my fertilizer, I turned to used soda bottles and realized just how much trash was out there and how much potential there was in this trash.  My whole way of thinking has shifted. The way I viewed waste, packaging, products, consumerism everything had changed. I wanted to help people to this same realization and that was why I originally started the school recycling fundraiser aspect of TerraCycle. I’d like to avoid any clichés here about “going for it” and just pressing on by “thinking outside the box,” so instead I’m going to zero in on something else.  It is very important to teach younger generations to challenge convention and to rethink the way the view the world and how they interact with the product they purchase and consume.

As new electronics are introduced all the time, the piles of e-waste grow and grow. According to the EPA, the United States on the whole throws out over 2 million tons of e-waste a year, which equals nearly 216 million units. While the 'per-person' impact seems minimal (who throws out multiple keyboards or cell phones a year?) the total numbers speak for themselves. Plus, there must more e-waste than we think. After all, who doesn't have an old monitor or monolithic desk tower in their basement or closet? TerraCycle recently launched a Keyboard and Mice Brigade® with Logitech, which I'm pretty excited about because it opens up a whole new industry for TerraCycle and a new option for e-waste recycling. As something of a tech geek myself, I haven't failed to notice the limited recycling options myself and even what's out there is poorly utilized!

Early on, I leaned toward limiting the information as I didn’t want people worrying about something that wasn’t their job and becoming distracted and unproductive. The problem was that when challenges came up I felt pretty much alone on them — and the staff was left guessing what was happening. Predictably, the lack of information fueled rumors and damaged morale. Over the last decade of leading TerraCycle, however, my mindset has slowly migrated to the other side of this question. Today, I’m inclined to give as much transparency as possible. I say as much as possible because we don’t really give total transparency. Human-resource matters (such as company payroll or stock options), legal matters (of all kinds) and certain financial matters (like merger deals we’re working on) are not shared with the entire team. Instead they are shared with those who have responsibility over them.