|
Reduce,
reuse, recycle. It's a mantra of the 21st century. Separating our
newspapers and cardboard, junk mail and office paper, magazines and
catalogs, bottles and cans, and plastic bottles from the rest of our
garbage has become part of our daily routines.
But not all
plastics are accepted at recycling centers or by curbside collectors.
Millions of rejected plastics — yogurt cups, juice pouches, food
wrappers — end up in landfills. How can what we toss in the trash be
turned into something useful?
That is the question that a
company called TerraCycle is tackling. Founded in 2001 by two Princeton
University students and now headquartered in Trenton, N.J., TerraCycle
collects what has long been considered trash and transforms it into
packaging for its garden and household products, or turns it into a
product — such as pencil cases, three-ring binders and (ironically)
plastic garbage cans.
TerraCycle recruits organizations
throughout the country to collect the trash it needs — and it pays them
for it. On its Web site, www.terracycle.net,
organizations enlist in "brigades": the soda bottle brigade, yogurt
container brigade, energy bar wrapper brigade or juice pouch brigade.
Why are they called brigades?
"Because we are fighting the war on waste," TerraCycle spokeswoman Jennifer Wilkie says.
The
brigades collect 20-ounce and two-liter soda bottles, six-ounce and
32-ounce yogurt containers, energy bar wrappers, and Capri Sun and
Honest Kids drink pouches. TerraCycle pays a few cents for each item,
making the brigades fundraisers for participating organizations.
Several
Vermont schools and other groups have joined the brigades. For many,
it's not so much about raising funds as raising awareness — that trash
is a byproduct of consumption and that recycling/reusing is an
effective way of dealing with that trash.
TerraCycle began in a
Princeton dorm room in the fall of 2001 when freshman Tom Szaky
realized he could make money from waste. The idea was to take food
waste from the dining hall, process it by feeding it to worms, then
sell the, uh, worm poop as fertilizer.
Szaky and fellow student
Jon Beyer wrote a business plan for the Princeton Entrepreneur Club and
the following summer made arrangements with the university's dining
services to accept dining hall waste and process it in a prototype
"worm gin." TerraCycle's first product was aptly called Worm Poop and
was bottled in reused soda bottles.
In spring 2003, Szaky took
an extended leave from Princeton (he has yet to return) and was on his
way to success, funded by both investors and prize money from business
plan contests (although he did turn down a $1 million prize when the
contest funder wanted to take TerraCycle in a less "eco" direction).
"Tom
came up with the idea of packaging the worm poop in soda bottles,"
Wilkie says. "He loved the idea of using garbage. He literally went
around to people's recycling bins."
Even the spray tops on the
bottles are either end-runs or over-runs, as are the boxes used to ship
TerraCycle's products. TerraCycle's raw materials are all waste, and
the worms are still the primary producers.
Now,
TerraCycle manufacturers a host of natural fertilizers made from worm
poop for everything from orchids to cacti. The company also makes
natural household cleaners and deer repellent from the essential oils
in plants, flower pots, bird feeders, composters, rain barrels, potting
mix, seed starter trays, plastic trash and recycling cans, bags and
pencil cases, and office binders (the three-hole punch variety).
Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot carry TerraCycle products (a
complete list of products and retailers is available at www.terracycle.net).
The
company still uses soda bottles to package the fertilizers and
cleaners, and it turns yogurt containers into planting pots (to replace
the black ones that nurseries use for seedlings). As for the drink
pouches, they become bags and pencil cases, while the energy bar
wrappers will become other "upcycled" accessories.
TerraCycle
now employs about 70 people and in 2007 grossed $3.5 million in sales.
This year, the company is on track to sell over $10 million of goods,
the vast majority coming from the sale of the worm poop fertilizers,
says Robin Tator, who helped Szaky found the company. Although data on
how many yogurt containers or wrappers they have collected is not yet
available, Tator says, they have collected and used millions of soda
bottles in the past seven years.
Wilkie says the company is
constantly thinking of new ways to use trash. As a small company, the
employees are always talking about what they can do with various forms
of refuse.
"Our newest product will be a way to use plastic
grocery bags," Wilkie says. "We fuse them together to make a durable
material, then sew that into a reusable bag."
But
don't look for a plastic bag brigade just yet. And don't look for
TerraCycle advertising; the company doesn't even release lists of
collection points.
"It's all word of mouth," Wilkie says, when
asked how people hear of TerraCycle's products and recycling programs.
"We don't advertise at all. … It's pretty amazing considering how many
participants we do have."
In the bottle brigade alone, 4,000
locations nationwide have signed up, and as of this month, 600
locations are collecting yogurt containers. These locations — mostly
schools, says Wilkie — then either use the funds themselves or choose
to preserve the rainforest through a program run by The Nature
Conservancy.
In Vermont, TerraCycle's brigades are win-win
programs, teaching recycling and reuse while earning a few dollars for
the organizations. Schools such as Oak Grove School in Brattleboro are
collecting yogurt containers, which are #5 plastic that many transfer
stations do not accept. Stonyfield Farm, the New Hampshire yogurt
company, uses #5 plastic (rather than #2, for example) because each
container is strong yet uses a minimal amount of plastic.
While
Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District in Montpelier recycles
#1 through #7 plastic, the Rutland County Solid Waste District takes
only #1 (e.g., water or Gatorade bottles) and #2 (milk jugs, shampoo
bottles, etc.).
Deane Wilson, RCSWD's waste diversion
coordinator, says that the district only accepts #1 and #2 because they
simply don't have room to store #5 containers. There is a large enough
supply of #1 and #2, so that they can regularly ship full trucks of the
recyclable plastics.
Last fall,
TerraCycle partnered with Stonyfield Farm to start the yogurt brigade.
TerraCycle gets a corporate sponsor for each brigade to help pay for
shipping the containers from collection spots, among other costs. The
recycling program fits with Stonyfield's mission of caring for the
planet.
"We're hoping to encourage people to recycle used yogurt
containers," Stonyfield spokeswoman Carmelle Druchniak says.
"(TerraCycle) has had great success with its worm poop. We're hoping
the planting pots are as popular."
TerraCycle
makes it easy for organizations to ship the collected material. For
example, an organization that signs onto the yogurt brigade receives
four pre-labeled cardboard boxes that hold 400 six-ounce yogurt cups or
50 quart (32-ounce) containers. When a box is full, it is shipped back
to TerraCycle, which pays two cents per six-ounce cup and five cents
per 32-ounce container. Do the math and a box full of cups is worth $8
while a box of the larger containers pays $2.50. TerraCycle writes
checks twice a year, in June and December.
But for some
TerraCycle's recycling brigades aren't as much about the money as they
are about providing a good lesson. Laura Schmigel, a high school
teacher at Grace Christian School in Bennington, says it teaches her
students about consumption and waste reduction. The funds, she says,
are "a nice incentive but not really what it is all about."
An
avid gardener, Schmigel happened upon TerraCycle's Web site while
researching composting. She read about the recycling/reuse brigades and
signed up the school to participate in the yogurt, energy bar wrapper
and drink pouch brigades. She has put a notice about the brigades in
the school's weekly newsletter and is creating a collection station in
the school's lobby.
"As a Christian teacher, I see the Earth as
the place God has created and asked us to care for," she says. "Small
efforts such as these have a cumulative effect. If nothing else, it
makes us thoughtful about how much we consume and what happens to the
waste we create."
At Green Mountain College in Poultney, Ashley
Graban, a senior studying environmental education and crew leader for
the college's recycling program, read about TerraCycle in a magazine.
She signed up the college for the bottle brigade. Last year, she led a
student-run crew of five people who collected bottles from all the
buildings on campus, and donated their earnings to The Nature
Conservancy's rainforest preservation program.
The bottle
brigade is currently on hold until TerraCycle can find a sponsor, but
Graban hopes the college will resume the brigade when one is found.
Becky
Anderson, coordinator of Oak Grove School's parent organization (called
FROGS, for Friends and Relatives of Oak Grave School), knows that the
yogurt brigade, which the school just signed up for, won't be a big
money-maker. But she is enthusiastic about the program anyway.
"It's
about bringing the community together and looking at how recycling has
become an important part of our lives," she says. "It sets an example
for the kids."
Plus, she says the kids will get a kick out of
it. "It's about doing something with waste. It's a good way to get kids
involved."
|
