That’s where TerraCycle comes into play. The goal of TerraCycle is to prevent snack and drink containers from ending up in landfills or being incinerated. TerraCycle helps band consumers together into groups — called “Brigades” — to return used packaging in bulk to TerraCycle. Returned goods are then cleaned out and transformed into new products including bags, coolers, clip boards, picture frames and kites. In addition, for every package returned the brigade earns money to put towards a charity of their choice or, if the team is from a school or non-profit organization, they can keep the money to further their mission.  It is a win-win program: people can reduce their waste while raising money for a good cause. As word spreads about TerraCycle more and more snack and beverage companies are joining the program, meaning even more packaging can be returned and re-purposed. Some major companies whose wrappers can be sent back to TerraCycle include: Stonyfield, Capri Sun, Frito Lay, Kraft, Mars Wrigley, Kashi, Aveeno, Colgate, and Ziploc. The recycled products that TerraCycle produces are then sold at major retailers, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and K-Mart. The end products are labeled as TerraCycle products, so consumers know they are supporting a good cause and creating demand for the program. According to the TerraCycle website, there are 11,597,783 people collecting trash with TerraCycle brigades, and over one billion units of waste have already been collected and re-purposed into 186 different products. If that doesn’t already sound good enough, these efforts also helped raise $1.2 Million for various schools, non profits, and charities across the country.

went nuts about TerraCycle after learning about them for the first time on Garbage Moguls. After a little research, I decided they were worth writing about. To initiate my series of Extraordinary Business Savvy Folks, I began with Tom Szaky and his crew. To recap, this Princeton guy was making worm poo. He needed something to contain all those worm poo. He collected soda bottles. Worm poo turned into insta-gold. He went into garage business with his friend selling worm poo. After that, they evolved into upcycling and recycling garbage into sellable goods. Sounds awesome, right? Try telling that to someone with a straight face! Now, he started off so small and so simple. He wanted TerraCycle to be the Walmart of garbage. Today, generating millions of dollars in revenue, I believe he succeeded.

TerraCycle's program benefiting nonprofits and schools The company collects what is typically nonrecyclable waste, such as candy and snack wrappers, pens, coffee bags and toothpaste tubes, from consumers, as well as recyclable items such as cell phones, plastic containers and more. It uses the trash to make new products sold at major retailers including Target, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Consumers who make the effort to get their trash to TerraCycle earn monetary rewards that go to nonprofits of their choice. Some manufacturers, such as skin care products maker Aveeno, even encourage consumers to send their brands' empty product containers to TerraCycle for repurposing.

Incentive programs aim to spread environmental awareness to more-mainstream consumers \ TerraCycle's program benefiting nonprofits and schools The company collects what is typically nonrecyclable waste, such as candy and snack wrappers, pens, coffee bags and toothpaste tubes, from consumers, as well as recyclable items such as cell phones, plastic containers and more. It uses the trash to make new products sold at major retailers including Target, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Consumers who make the effort to get their trash to TerraCycle earn monetary rewards that go to nonprofits of their choice. Some manufacturers, such as skin care products maker Aveeno, even encourage consumers to send their brands' empty product containers to TerraCycle for repurposing.

Tom Szaky, a 28-year-old wunderkind from Canada, wants you to send him your garbage, and he’ll pay the shipping. Oh, and he also wants to make a lot of money and save the world by taking unrecyclable waste like chip bags and juice pouches and turning them into new products like backpacks, kites, coolers and clocks. Now he and his company, TerraCycle, take tons of hard-to-recycle plastics and other waste collected from collection “brigades” formed in schools, churches businesses and service organizations and turns them into products sold at Walmart and Target. They pay the shipping for articles like shopping bags, used pens, whatever, and pay 2 cents per unit to a charity on behalf of the collecting organization. All of it is organized through the company Web site, terracycle.net. The feel-good business model has worked with giant companies like Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay and Kimberly-Clark, who pitch the program on their packaging. Walmart and Target also have joined up, setting up collection points and selling products.

What excited me about my daughter’s project was her description “Inspired by Terracycle“. My daughter’s familiarity with Terracyle comes from items we have been sent to review for our blogs.

TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials. With over 50 products available at major retailers like Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Petco and Whole Foods Market, TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by finding innovative, unique uses for materials others deem garbage.

It seems easy, at first, to hate Tom Szaky, who gives the keynote address at Columbia’s fourth annual Green is Good for Business conference on Tuesday, Sept. 14. At 27, Szaky is the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company that he started in his Princeton dorm room. Last Friday, he was driving up the West Coast to a Dave Matthews Band show, having just met with one of his company’s big clients: Starbucks. Other clients include Kraft Foods, Home Depot and Frito-Lay. But the goal of TerraCycle, his nine-year-old company, is so jaw dropping — and so freakishly noble — that scorn and jealousy dissipate quickly.

Capri Sun, partnering with TerraCycle, recycles old juice pouches into fun school items such as back packs, totes and pencil cases. The group also offers a Be Green, Earn Green program for schools and organizations. Schools, non-profit organizations and even individuals can sign up at www.terracycle.net to be part of the “Drink Pouch Brigade” and collect used drink pouches. The minimum number of pouches to collect and send in is 500, but the group pays $0.02 per pouch to the charity, school or non-profit organization of your choice. TerraCycle even provides shipping labels. The colorful recycled items are sold in local stores such as WalMart or online at www.theultimategreenstore.com.

Tom Szaky, co-founder and chief executive officer of TerraCycle Inc., a company that has become the most eco-friendly brand in North America, will be the guest speaker for the Allan P. Kirby Lecture in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Dorothy Dickson Darte Center. The event is free to the public. TerraCycle is well known for TerraCycle plant food, a fertilizer made from worm feces available through retailers such as Walmart, Whole Foods and Home Depot. The company manufactures more than 50 consumer products. Other products include garbage cans made from crushed computers, handbags made from energy bar wrappers and juice pouches and eco-friendly binders and pencils. The company won more than 100 environmental and social awards. It has three manufacturing facilities in North America with headquarters located in Trenton, N.J.

Every snack bag, baby diaper, candy bar wrapper that goes into the trash, is a story waiting to be told.  The question is, will the story be a negative one documented by a critic or a positive one created by you? If the product you market is made from non-recyclable material, it’s getting easier to convert that negative into a positive story.  A company called Terracycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  is helping CPG brands like Frito Lay and Mars turn their waste into upcycled products like speakers.  These re-birth stories are not only good for the planet, but a golden opportunity for business (as evidenced by Terracycle’s success <http://www.spider-topihitam.com/tom-szaky-of-terracycle-shares-secrets-to-success.html> ). Founded in 2001 by a 19 year old Princeton University freshman named Tom Szaky, TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of non-recyclable waste material.  With over 50 products available at major retailers like Walmart and Target, TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world.  Every month it gives $100,000.00 in $0.02 donations and has are over 8.5 million people in the U.S. actively collecting waste to create its upcycled products.