Have you eaten a candy bar today? Look at the wrapper. If you're in North America, there's a high likelihood that it was made by Mars . And before you toss it out, with or without the knowledge that it's not recyclable, stop. Stop, because we just made a deal with them. What kind of deal? The largest diversion of post industrial waste ever. That's right, the bit of flexible film in your hand now holds the possibility of becoming something other than a resident in the landfill for eons.

How many billboards did you pass today? If you can even keep count, you're lucky. Most of those are made with vinyl. And most of them get thrown away. Over 3 million a year in the US alone. That's nearly 10,000 tons, or to give you a visual, about the weight of 2500 adult elephants. Once it makes it to the landfill, it's not going anywhere. Vinyl does not biodegrade. We thought something should be done about that. Starting this month, we are. Terracycle together with Yakpak will be turning those billboards into messenger bags, backpacks, and more. As a byproduct of those billboards being built to withstand the elements, these have a lifetime warranty. As Yakpak founder Stephen Holt put it to me, "The only way one of these bags will ever end up in a landfill is if someone chooses to throw it away."

Subaru, a company that you may assume creates significant waste, recycles 97% of its manufacturing waste and reuses the rest to generate electricity. (Photo: Eric Castro on Flickr) I make products out of what would otherwise be garbage. That’s all we at TerraCycle do. So of course garbage is an issue that’s front of mind for us. But what about your company? What about any company? Does every company have a waste problem? Or turned around, a waste opportunity? Is there any company that doesn’t have a waste problem?

What are you good at as a company? What are you not? Though we at TerraCycle (and I imagine you too) like to think we can do anything we set our minds to, we know what our core competencies are: Branding, materials science and repurposing, and post consumer collection programs. Anything else, we can do it, but there are often others that do it better. And increasingly, we're happy to let them do it. Why expend a lot of energy trying to up our game in those areas, when we can instead focus on maximizing the amount of "waste" we collect, making the most people aware of the options we offer, and benefiting thousands of people who collect product for our brigades?

Have you heard of a company called FAB? I’m guessing not, and at the same time, it’s a safe bet you’ve seen their products. And depending on how old you are, you have been running towards or running away from them for years. And fast. FAB has licenses for a huge variety of today’s biggest pop culture brands: Paul Frank, Hello Kitty, Hannah Montana, Nickelodeon, Hello Kitty, Disney, Marvel, and on. From backpacks to snow globes to “novelty clocks,” their collective licensing and manufacturing might create an enormous amount of trinkets that will likely end up in the trash months after purchase. And we’re now partnered with them.

Next time you're home, look around your closet. Your attic. How many pairs of jeans do you have there, unworn for months, years, decades even? I have four. Aside from the ones you keep for "some day" when you're skinny again or returning to fat, which ones of those could go? And where should they go? I'm betting your first thought was Salvation Army or some local version of such a thing. A commendable thought, but there's a problem. Salvation Army does so much to benefit individuals, their local community, and the economy. Young people get their first college apartment furnished. Seniors meet their needs affordably. People of all ages get trained in job skills, becoming more self sufficient, contributing to their local economy, and reducing burden on government unemployment/welfare budgets But there's one problem. The Bigger Cost of Donating Jeans

This week, TerraCycle officially launched in Brazil! The new global launch comes just six months after launching with Frito-Lay in the US, and now the expansion into Brazil - with other countries to follow - makes an important point: Big business isn't always a bad guy. In fact, it can help small business grow via sustainability. The news came to me from an e-mail from Carlos, a representative of Pepsico Brazil: "Breaking news.... the PepsiCo / TerraCycle Brazil project is up and running. The displays are in 59 WalMart stores in São Paulo, Curitiba and Recife. Above a photo of the store we visited yesterday. In this particular store we have a TV screen with a 45-sec video with the story. I’ll post it on YouTube in a few minutes. Thank you for sharing the passion in making this happen. Let’s celebrate!" This launch marks the first step in TerraCycle's efforts to go global. The next steps include launching with national programs in Canada, Mexico and the UK later this year. All this news comes with a major realization to me. A realization that I think all of us that are dedicated to the green movement can be a part of. While we typically spend our time critizing big businesses, especially global conglomerates. I can stand here as a witness and tell you that if you come up with a big idea that does good and fulfills the goals of one of these corporations they will do everything in their power to embrace the idea and make it huge.

As entrepreneurs, we all know the value and necessity of forming partnerships. Little would get done in the business world without a solid network to help grow our companies. Form an alliance with the right organization and your impact is amplified exponentially. But that begs a tough entrepreneurial question: Should a younger, cutting-edge company join forces with an established, more conventional company? It can be a slippery slope. Will the former company's values be in line with those of the latter? Whose mission and ideals will win out?

My book, Revolution in a Bottle, hit the streets this week. It follows the story of TerraCycle from our beginnings in my dorm room, shoveling maggot filled organic waste, to creating products we sold to Wal-Mart and other major big box retailers, getting sued by Scotts and creating “sponsored waste” programs to upcycle branded waste. It also offers insights on how we approach media and pursue new opportunities. Read on to catch an excerpt from the book. In many ways, what follows are lessons I learned on the job as an untrained and highly instinctual entrepreneur. TerraCycle taught me extreme forms of bootstrapping, and many of the innovations for which we are known were responses to failures of initial attempts in packaging, marketing, product development and even investor pitches. For me, the key to our success was having one big idea—making the greenest, most affordable and effective products from waste—and holding firmly to it. As you will see, there were numerous times when, for example, to attract investment, we might have compromised our environmental commitments, but if we did, TerraCycle would have ended up like one of many companies, rather than in a league of its own. We let the idea of our company—producing a range of green products made from and packaged in waste without charging a premium for them—live and grow within us. Not only did that commitment distinguish us with our immediate customers (large retail companies), and with end consumers, local and national press and with our sponsored waste brand partners, it also gave us cost advantages over other co

So many coffee lovers have switched to single portion delivery devices produced by a variety of brands, including Tassimo, Flavia and Green Mountain. The coffee tastes is always fresh, perfectly brewed and one doesn’t waste extra coffee left from brewing a full pot. However, the packaging isn't made to be recyclable, so if it is to be diverted from landfills, it needs to go through a time consuming process of disassembly. This begs a serious environmental question. The single dose cartridge is a composite of aluminum, plastic and coffee. It used cartridge is currently not recyclable and is what Bill McDonough would call a "monstrous hybrid" since all three parts on their own are either compostable or recyclable, but together they make a unit that isn't readily recyclable and thus is headed to the landfill. (The same is true for a wide range of common products too long to list here). The solution to waste streams like this is to collect them and “dissemble.” The separation of the three basic materials is hard to automate and likely must be done by hand, at which point, the coffee can be easily be composted and the plastic and aluminum recycled.