Eco-Capitalism

TerraCycle is arguably the first-ever Eco-Capitalist corporation.

At TerraCycle, we not only limit our consumption of natural capital and minimize our waste, we actually reverse the entire process. TerraCycle consumes waste as a raw material in creating a finished product that renews natural capital.

The emerging concept of Eco-Capitalism holds that organizations must be accountable for their performance in the consumption and production of natural capital, an economic term for the goods and services available from nature. Such goods and services include the resources we use in conducting manufacturing and commerce, both nonrenewable (oil, coal, metal ore, etc.) and renewable (forests, fisheries, grasslands, etc.).

Traditional capitalistic business practices and public policies have typically ignored the value of natural capital. We have been wasteful is our use of energy, materials, water, fiber, topsoil, and ecosystems.

Born when the bounty of the natural world seemed boundless, the previous Industrial Revolutions enabled workers to become vastly more productive in an era when low per-capita output and a relative scarcity of people were limiting progress in exploiting natural capital.

Today we face the opposite situation: abundant people and labor-saving machines, but diminishing natural capital.

In response to this changing pattern of scarcity, the currently emerging Industrial Revolution is driven by the tenants of eco-capitalism. Today’s Industrial Revolution is transforming industrial processes and business practices so that they minimize consumption of what is now the limiting factor of production: natural capital.

At TerraCycle, we not only limit our consumption of natural capital and minimize our waste, we actually reverse the entire process. TerraCycle consumes waste as a raw material in creating a finished product that renews natural capital. TerraCycle Plant Foods™ are created by feeding organic waste to worms, liquefying their poop and packaging the liquid in reused soda bottles.

It is said that there is no waste in nature. Everything that is not used goes back in some way to regenerate for the future. At TerraCycle, we believe that human production must achieve that same level of sustainability, and we are proud to demonstrate the achievability of that ideal.