During the past two months, several Floral Street School students with the help of the eco-friendly organization the Dumpster Divers, collected over 2,000 empty juice box pouches and snack bags, which will be sent to the eco-friendly company Terracycle.  Terracycle collects various types of trash and creates new products, such as coolers and backpacks, to be sold in major stores across the country, such as Walmart, Target and Home Depot.

Named the No 1. CEO under thirty by Inc. magazine in 2006 for his innovative approach to fertilizer and recycled goods, in the two years that followed (2007-2009) Tom Szaky went on to write about 30 blogitles for Inc. and a book that surely has more than 30 pages – Revolution in a Bottle. Now it’s 2011 and he’s still under 30 but he’s worth at least 30 times 30 more than he was at the start of 2006. Tom, a Princeton drop-out, is a man on a mission to run a fully sustainable company. While he was still in his dorm room he was dreaming up TerraCycle, one of the fastest growing private companies named by Inc. magazine in 2009.

Named the No 1. CEO under thirty by Inc. magazine in 2006 for his innovative approach to fertilizer and recycled goods, in the two years that followed (2007-2009) Tom Szaky went on to write about 30 blogitles for Inc. and a book that surely has more than 30 pages – Revolution in a Bottle. Now it’s 2011 and he’s still under 30 but he’s worth at least 30 times 30 more than he was at the start of 2006. Tom, a Princeton drop-out, is a man on a mission to run a fully sustainable company. While he was still in his dorm room he was dreaming up TerraCycle, one of the fastest growing private companies named by Inc. magazine in 2009.

Named the No 1. CEO under thirty by Inc. magazine in 2006 for his innovative approach to fertilizer and recycled goods, in the two years that followed (2007-2009) Tom Szaky went on to write about 30 blogitles for Inc. and a book that surely has more than 30 pages – Revolution in a Bottle. Now it’s 2011 and he’s still under 30 but he’s worth at least 30 times 30 more than he was at the start of 2006. Tom, a Princeton drop-out, is a man on a mission to run a fully sustainable company. While he was still in his dorm room he was dreaming up TerraCycle, one of the fastest growing private companies named by Inc. magazine in 2

On the national level a company called TerraCycle believes in a bold goal of eliminating the very idea of waste. Through an extensive network of collection and manufacturing locations, Terracycle is teaming with organizations to have schoolchildren collect trash products such as Ziploc bags, candy wrappers, chip bags, drink pouches and toothpaste tubes — paying 2 cents per product to the charity of their choice. These materials, rather than going to a landfill, are diverted into manufacturing to produce products such as coolers, trashcans, benches, and even fences. Started in 2001 by a college student, TerraCycle has already collected more than a billion different waste products and turned them into a range of products that are sold at stores like Walmart and Whole Foods. So far they have yielded more than $1 million for charity, and the numbers continue to grow.

On the national level a company called TerraCycle believes in a bold goal of eliminating the very idea of waste. Through an extensive network of collection and manufacturing locations, Terracycle is teaming with organizations to have schoolchildren collect trash products such as Ziploc bags, candy wrappers, chip bags, drink pouches and toothpaste tubes — paying 2 cents per product to the charity of their choice. These materials, rather than going to a landfill, are diverted into manufacturing to produce products such as coolers, trashcans, benches, and even fences. Started in 2001 by a college student, TerraCycle has already collected more than a billion different waste products and turned them into a range of products that are sold at stores like Walmart and Whole Foods. So far they have yielded more than $1 million for charity, and the numbers continue to grow.

“TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating a national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collect programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash.

“TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating a national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collect programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash.

“TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating a national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collect programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash. Founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, then a 20-year-old Princeton University freshman, TerraCycle began by producing organic fertilizer, packaging liquid worm poop in used soda bottles. Since then TerraCycle has grown into one of the fastest growing green companies in the world.”

i have heard of terracycle before – who hasn’t seen those cute little pop art totes and pouches they make out of recycled juice pouches and gum wrappers? but i have only recently become aware of the business as a whole, with their model and goal. the company was started by a college student to win a “business start-up” contest of sorts. the idea was, “why pay for materials for manufacturing when there is so much usable material going to the landfills?” their first product was plant food/fertilizer which was quickly picked up by large outfits such as wal*mart. but as the company grew, so did their capacity to adapt and reuse the most common “land fillers.” terracycle now has almost 60,000 locations around the country (and more available all the time) where people can get paid to drop off juice pouches, zip top kitchen bags, cheese wrappers, yogurt containers, and many more.