You’ve heard it over the years: Company creates curriculum for schools, with conflicted teachers not wanting to advertise to their students, but at the same time at a deficit in terms or resources. Frequently, this is a justifiable concern, as companies have advertising and product placement throughout. This is a mistake. No matter the short term value, the lingering long term effect is this mixed feeling towards the brand, and diluted educational offerings to students. Of all the things that I’ve done as CEO of Terracycle, none has excited me more than what we’re about to launch: The TerraCycle Curriculum Series. There is minimal branding in the curriculum. No mention of our products. No focus on how to be a good consumer. Instead, we teamed up with sustainable curriculum specialist Cloud Institute and created an academically rigorous nine part program to be released over three years each spring, fall and winter that’s built to be fit within national curriculum standards. Free. We are committed to this being more than happy talk for kindergartners, that’s long forgotten by first grade. There are four distinct programs covering from K to 12, ranging from “Where do apples go? A story about the nature of Materials” to “An exploration of Cradle to Cradle design thinking” So, you may be asking, why do this?

In recent years, consumer consciousness about the need for and economic value of making use of reusable packaging, containers and the like has risen a great deal, elevating (or should I say broadening) the range of people who actively and regularly choose to seek out such options. Water bottles and shopping bags are the primary examples of this, bottle options having gone from the Hippie staple Nalgene and not much else to decidedly trendy designs, drawing in those that may not even have factored ecological considerations into the equation when making their purchase decision.

When was the last time you bought a single use water bottle? Ok, how long before that! For many of you, carrying a water bottle has become routine. And how many reusable bags do you own, and actually use? I'm guessing at least two. And your lunch, what's it get carried in? For an increasing number, it's something that isn't going in the trash when you're done. Yes, for an increasingly wide spectrum of the population, making sustainable choices in your life is an everyday occurrence, no longer confined to hippies and environmentalists. And yet there's a problem here. Reusables are not indestructible. What happens to that water bottle when it gets irreparably damaged? And that lunch container that now has a crack in it? That shopping bag looked great when you bought it...until the strap broke. For most reusable things out there, unless they're made of glass or aluminum, or one type of material that your local recycling services happens to process, there's nowhere for them to go but the dump or your attic, unless you happen to have a welding torch or be handy at sewing. It doesn't have to be that way.

Do you consider yourself a green company? A company trying to go green? Or trying to do as much as you need to be perceived as green? You’d better watch out. Consumers aren’t stupid. And thanks to books like Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services, they’re going to keep getting smarter, faster.

Imagine you're going into a big box store. I know, a far fetched scenario for some of you reading, but play along with me here. In them, there's usually that section: The seasonal one with Christmas lights in winter, beach balls in summer. You know the one. Now imagine if it had upcycled and eco-friendly products, displayed next to the product whose packaging was used to make that product. And it had information telling people all about this. An entire section, prominently placed, educating consumers and shifting people's minds about the ease of living more sustainably, and the part they could play in doing that. Far fetched you say? A reality, right now, I say. In Walmart's Hot Spot section. A huge selection of what we create, right next to what we collect via our Brigades to make it. This month Walmarts across the country will have what they're calling Earth Zone. That a store of this size, reach, and impact is choosing to do this is huge. Say what you will about Walmart, but all our talk about becoming a greener society comes down to making it as easy as possible for people to see themselves doing it. Making it normal. Making it an enjoyable experience. Earth Zone does all of that. Beyond Walmart, beyond TerraCycle, this excites me.

Look out, it’s nearly the 40th anniversary of Earth Day (now a month-long affair) and companies everywhere will be grasping at tenuous links to the occasion, vying for the green in your pocketbook. And what are we doing? A green pop up shop , of course, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in the heart of the busiest part of New York. We are doing this in conjunction with the Times Square Alliance and NY’s Fashion Center Business Improvement District, which is trying very hard to bring more sustainable businesses and retailers to New York.

In recent years, after the initial honeymoon of broader consumer interest in all things green, it’s now settled squarely in the space of “prove it to me.” Yet proving something’s greenness, sustainability, fair trade status, organic certification, carbon footprint has resulted in a dust storm of competing certifications, labels, very few of which are gaining traction with the public as credible or recognizable. For all they know, the company could be making it up, doing it themselves, or something similarly “greenwashy”.

Look at the bottle of juice you just drank. The detergent you're going to use. The plastic backer on the desk calendar. What's on all of them? That familiar "chasing arrows" graphic with a number in the middle. That means it's recyclable, right? Sorry, but not quite. For all but the most forward thinking (and deep pocketed) locales, primarily only #1 and #2 plastics are regularly recycled. "Excuse me, what? How can that be? It says it's recyclable on here, are we being lied to?" you say? No, but you are in some ways being passively deceived. Companies are generally careful not to explicitly say that their packaging is recyclable, but they don't go out of their way to let you know it likely won't be, either. So why are so few types of materials getting recycled? Simple. Economics. As I've been witnessing, and you may have too, recycling is a business based on demand for the resulting materials.

Greenwashing comes in many forms. Vague language. Overstated claims. False associations. And the packaging you yourself are responsible for creating and/or processing. Come again? Yes. You know it well. The chasing arrows logo on packaging, with 1-7 in the middle. Yes, it’s a convenient identifier for recyclers and waste processors. But there’s a problem here. The general public thinks it means it means it’s recyclable. Not that it’s possible to do so “where facilities exist,” as some in the product world would say on their packaging. No, they think, across the board, this means they can toss their used packaging in the recycle bin, and voila, poof, it will get recycled, they’ve done their eco duty!

TerraCycle's goal is singular: To solve the problem of waste. We have not taken positions on the products that we collect, similar to how recycling companies accept products of any brand that fit their capacity to recycle. But here's where it gets interesting—We've been approached by a tobacco company to collect and turn cigarette butts into new eco-friendly products. What do you think? Is doing business with a cigarette company any different than any of the other companies whose waste we collect? Or is this somehow different? If so, how?