TerraCycle produces very cool consumer products from recycled food packaging. But for businesses trying to grow revenues in this “soft recovery” the coolest thing about TerraCycle is its creative business strategies for generating top-line revenue results with attractive profit margins.
How it engage its customers is what makes TerraCycle’s strategy unique. For example, it “up-cycles” Capri Sun wrappers to create products like pencil holders that target the very school children who are the principal consumers of Capri Sun juices. Its customer engagement program involves encouraging school children to collect the wrappers as a fund raiser for their school and a path for learning about recycling. Beyond this being a brilliant social marketing example it also makes money. From a production-cycle perspective, TerraCycle takes a zero-cost waste stream and converts it into a product with attractive margins.
Sharpie, Paper Mate and EXPO have partnered with TerraCycle to collect and reuse pens, markers and other writing instruments in a way that helps schools, charities, and non-profits to raise funds.
Groups that want to participate can print pre-paid shipping labels from TerraCycle’s website. The collected writing instruments are then shipped to TerraCycle. Once received, TerraCycle upcycles trashed pens into new products.
Keep trash out of the landfills by upcycling them with Terracycle and the proceeds get donated to a local school or charity.
Terracycle uses non-recyclable waste materials to create brand new eco-friendly products. Waste materials are collected by people around the world. For each item sent in, money is donated to a school or charity. Look through the garbage and see if these waste products can be kept out of landfills and used to create brand new things.
Nancy Baiche would have an entirely green school if she could, but for now she's happy believing that teaching the prekindergarten classes at Williams Ledger Elementary School about recycling could impact the world and maybe save the earth someday.
"They love it," she said. "They're becoming little voices that I'm hoping in the future will become bigger voices."
Recycling is part of the curriculum in prekindergarten classes every year, but this year the eight classes at Williams Ledger are getting hands on experience while earning extra money for the school.
Baiche, a prekindergarten aide in Bernadine Wagner's class at Williams Ledger, said she was looking for lessons and educational tools to help her students understand recycling when she came across the TerraCycle program.
"There's a lot of information out there for adults, but it's really hard to teach to a 3- or 4-year- old," she said.
TerraCycle is a company that takes trash such as drink pouches and chip bags and turns it into products such as CapriSun tote bags and pencil bags made from cookie wrappers.
Likewise, sustainability keeps growing in the packaging world. I think the packaging question of the century is: How can we eliminate, or at least reduce, the amount of packaging going into landfills?
When Terracycle started making backpacks and clipboards out of used juice boxes and chip bags in 2001, it was one of the first creative ways to “upcycle” waste and keep it out of landfills.
And the solutions are likely only going to get more innovative. This year’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver featured medals made from old computers and TVs. Athletes at this summer’s World Cup will be wearing jerseys made from recycled plastic bottles. And Ecovative Design has created a material made from mushrooms that can replace polystyrene in product packaging.
Innovations like these are giving us a glimpse into the future. Imagine a world where you can’t find plastic bottles in a landfill. Instead, you’ll find them in the fabric of your clothes. Or picture wearing jewelry with a new type of gemstone made from outdated electronics.
ROANOKE RAPIDS — Making moves to enrich the environment and their education is what some 4th graders at Belmont Elementary School in Roanoke Rapids have been up to lately. Working with a company called TerraCycle, the Belmont students help turn some of their trash into useful products and help raise money for a program bringing them closer to the environment their recycling efforts help protect.
“It’s teaching them a lot about recycling,” said Heather Karns, a teacher involved in the program at Belmont. “After their soccer games, the kids will bring back a pile of the Capri-Sun pouches and instead of throwing them out, they bring them in for recycling.”
Yes! Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!
The question being, should TerraCycle partner with tobacco butts? TerraCycle's Tom Szaky took to the pages of Treehugger yesterday to ask if his company should work with a tobacco company to turn cigarette butts into new eco-friendly products. They've been approached by a tobacco company and Tom's wondering if working with them is somehow different than any of the other companies they work with. He's also looking for ideas what the the butts can be turned into after they're collected.
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?
