TerraCycle: Worm Poop and So Much More

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Although it seems an unlikely success story, TerraCycle -- the company famous for turning worm poop into a household name -- points the way to success in how we address many of our environmental issues.

TerraCycle takes waste of all kinds -- discarded electronics, soda bottles, drink pouches and of course worm poop -- and turns it into household cleaners, office supplies, backpacks and other unexpected products. By looking in new and unexpected ways at the waste that people and companies create every day, TerraCycle has found a way to turn the production cycle on its ear and turn trash into gold.

Tom Szaky, the CEO of TerraCycle, spoke to GreenBiz Radio about how the company got its start and how it plans to expand no matter what comes down the waste stream.

Matthew Wheeland: Tom, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. I guess the first thing that we should talk about would be the OfficeMax announcement from last week.

Tom Szaky: Yeah, right on.

MW: Can you tell me a little bit about that?

TS: Well, so OfficeMax is very exciting. TerraCycle is a company where we make and package products entirely out of waste. And we started with worm poop in a soda bottle, and that was a big success at places like Home Depot, Target and Wal-Mart, and we decided, "Well, look, could we extend this idea of made and packaged out of waste into more things than just simply worm poop or lawn and garden products?" And Office Max represents the first major expansion, which is into the category of office products.

With them, they actually launched four categories of products for us, our cleaners, like all-purpose window, bathroom cleaner. They also launched our super eco-friendly binder and pencil cases and trash cans. And what's unique about each of these items is, for example, the pencil cases are made by sewing together used juice pouches that we collect through our juice pouch brigade, that were drink pouch brigade. The trash cans are made from e-waste, from crushed computers. The binders are actually made from 100 percent recycled paper and 90 percent recycled steel. They have no vinyl on them, and it's really durable. And then finally, our cleaners, which are plant-based extracts that are packaged very similar to our fertilizer, which is in used soda bottles and leftover trigger heads, so you sort of have that big TerraCycle brand expansion that OfficeMax really enabled.

MW: So I want to come back and talk about the products, the sort of second level of products. But let me just back up and say, you said, "Worm poop in a soda bottle was a big hit at Target." That to me sounds like a very unexpected result. Was this a surprise how quickly these things took off?

TS: Well, it's been a lot of work. We've been working on the worm poop thing here for about four years now. And it started slow, and then it started really picking up. I think the reason we've been successful is, most of the time, eco-friendly products are more expensive. And what's ironic is that we arguably have the most environmentally friendly products in the categories we're in, and you can go to our website and judge for yourself, but I believe very strongly that these are probably as eco-friendly as you can possibly go. Yet, what's ironic is because they're made from waste and because of the cool economics of waste, it actually retails for the same price as your chemical versions on the shelf. And that's what I think was a major reason for its success.

MW: And how did you go from worm poop to cleaners or office supplies?

TS: We're not as much a worm poop company. What we always were, and we started with worm poop as a company that was fascinated with making products out of garbage, and we just started first with worm poop and soda bottles, TerraCycle plant food. But then, that model could be applied fundamentally to anything, whether it's cleaner, office products, Christmas products, winter products, bags, just anything. And we're launching aggressively in all of these categories, some incredibly cool products.

MW: I was looking over the list of products on your website. And some of the things, like the binder, for instance, seem fairly -- maybe not straightforward, but not a huge leap of imagination, like, let's make a binder out of entirely recycle materials.

TS: Right. Sure.

MW: Other things, like the drink pouch -- explain that a little bit, and tell me how does that idea go from an idea to an actual product?

TS: So where it starts is we look at the waste stream, and we say -- and we found this very cool waste stream, which is used drink pouches. What's interesting about drink pouches is that there's 4.5 billion to 5 billion produced every year, and they all end up in a landfill because there's no choice. There's no recyclable choice on them.