In the up-and-coming era of recycling a company called TerraCycle is making a big mark with their innovative and popular products, many of which you’re probably already familiar with. TerraCycle products include their own brand of eco-cleaners, a number of school and office supplies, and firelogs and starters- all of which are made directly from everyday recycled products.
Named the “The Coolest Little Start-up in America” by Inc. Magazine, TerraCycle, started in 2003, now offers programs and incentives for sending them everything from soda bottles to cookie wrappers, yogurt containers to wine corks, even notoriously hard to recycled juice punches. From all this affectionately termed “crap” TerraCycle is able to make products that are sometimes novelties, sometimes necessities.
Juice pouch and cookie wrappers bag totes (a fad coming more into vogue with the sale of Elizabeth Haub recycled bags) are sold through their website and manufactured without having to underego expensive or environmentally detrimental recycling processes. The same goes for their cleaners, sold in reconditioned plastic bottles without melting them down and re-shaping them.
Juice pouch and cookie wrappers bag totes (a fad coming more into vogue with the sale of Elizabeth Haub recycled bags) are sold through their website and manufactured without having to underego expensive or environmentally detrimental recycling processes. The same goes for their cleaners, sold in reconditioned plastic bottles without melting them down and re-shaping them.
TerraCycle has made a fortune off of recycling with rave reviews coming from their products as well as their recycling program. Offering .06 cents per plastic bottle and anywhere from .02 to .05 cents for yogurt containers, they are able to offer high incentives for recycling, sparking a number or recycle and donation drives in schools and communities across the US, such as the 5th graders at Catherine A Dwyer Elementary School in Denville, New Jersey. TerraCycle is even receiving press from NBC, having been investigated in a segment on the Nightly News in December.
Companies whose waste products are recycled such as Capri Sun (known for their pouch drinks) are more than happy to oblige TerraCycle the use of their name and logo on their waste products. Besides free advertising, the message of a TerraCycle bag becomes a way for companies to become synonymous with recycling.
Perhaps the best lesson is in the success of this small company, finally proving what many have professed to know all along. That the economic benefits of recycling may be the best economic stimulus we can provide, especially in these tough economic times.
I am an junior English major/ Philosophy minor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Currently I am spending the spring of 2009 studying at the University College Cork in Cork, Ireland.
