Tom Szaky is a battler who started refilling recycled plastic water bottles with worm castings tea to sell as fertilizer. But then he had a huge vision. The lightbulb over his head went off when he thought about the fact that ‘No animal in nature leaves garbage. Only man leaves garbage. So let’s deal with it’ and from there he expanded his tiny home-based business to work out the technology to recycle almost every piece of rubbish to give it a second life.
If it weren’t for the great big carbon footprint of the airfare, the things on this website would make great Christmas presents. The business is called Terracycle.
The story of Tom and his ethical business was featured in ‘How I made my Millions’ a CNBC series and his tenacity and vision are only matched by his inventiveness.
Back in 2001, he was doing an assignment at Princeton Uni which required making a business plan he remembered that someone had told him worms ate garbage. He and his pal, Jon Beyer, bought a box of worms and set them to work eating through the refuse and a prototype was developed to reprocess solid waste from dining halls at Princeton University. They bottled it and sold it. The ecology and ethics of the business were important. Initially, what was sold was liquidised worm castings (poop made into a tea for plants) high in nitrogen and not damaging. It was packed in recycled bottles. That business was just the foundation and quickly diversified into all kinds of fertilizers at different strengths. They ended up with millions of worms working their little butts off to make money for investors. TerraCycle processes organic garbage destined for landfills through a revolutionary process that is able to convert the raw materials into liquid plant food in just three weeks.
The New Jersey based company’s products are sold at Home Depot, Wal-Mart Target and plant nurseries and of course on line. Although initial growth was slow, the company outstripped the projected $6 million dollars in sales back in 2007 which gave them the money to try recycling other stuff.
The key to Terracycle’s success is the use of free raw materials—organic waste—to manufacture their product. They also package their liquid fertilizer in recycled soda bottles (purchased for five cents each from a network of more than 3,000 elementary schools and non-profits holding fundraisers and dubbed “the Bottle Brigade”. The company sells many products now, from potting soil packaged in recycled gallon milk jugs to seed starter produced in trays made from recycled paper. There are totes made from chip packets and juice packs and plastic recyclable pellets made from bottles and other waste plastic, bike bags, bird feeders, dog products and even skunk odour remover (whew, thank heavens we don’t have those in Australia!).
TerraCycle produces all-natural, eco-friendly items that are the first mass-produced products in the world to be packaged in already used plastic containers. The entire product line is made out of garbage – from the contents to the packaging and as a result, the company is the first mass-produced consumer product to have a negative environmental footprint. And a handsome (in a geeky way) boss!
When you look at the simplicity of his business, you have to ask, ‘Why isn’t everyone doing this?’ Councils and recycling plants in Australia don’t separate out chip bags and other stuff, so it ends up being covered with bacteria and smelling ghastly.
Perhaps we should be going back to the days when we take our own containers to refill at a bulk store. I do that with laundry liquid and you can take your jar to Jaspers Coffee and they will fill it with coffee beans or grinds for you. All you need to do is ask and most people in shops will fill your clean container for you at the source of processing. I miss the old bulk stores but the unions and health inspectors (probably at the behest of packaging companies) put them out of business years ago though there is still one near the Victoria Market and Asian produce stores have baskets of spices etc.. Give them a go and send us your favourite bulk store locations.
After all, NOT using a new container at all is reducing and even better than re-cycling.
