New Jersey company turning wrappers into school supplies
Thu, Jun 5, 2008 
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BY PETER DAINING
pdaining@grandhaventribune.com
An innovative startup company is partnering with big brand
names like Nabisco and Capri Sun to recycle wrappers and containers
that would likely otherwise land in a dump.
New Jersey-based Terracycle then transforms the trash into make products like backpacks, pencil boxes and change purses.
"Terracycle has a unique opportunity to help larger companies to
reduce their waste streams, while procuring zero cost materials to make
eco-friendly products," said 25-year-old founder Tom Szaky, who dropped
out of Princeton to launch Terracycle. "This idea ... benefits any
large company with a nonrecyclable packaging and helps Terracycle
provide consumers with affordably priced, eco-friendly products."
More than 7,300 businesses, schools and nonprofits across the
country help Terracycle by collecting wrappers, containers and bottles.
In return, the company donates a couple of cents per wrapper to the
school or a charity chosen by the business.
Employees at Gazelle Sports in Holland collect energy bar wrappers
to send to Terracycle. Kyle Klooster, the store's assistant manager who
eats a Clif Bar each day, said Terracycle pays the shipping cost.
"Once I heard about it, I thought it would be a better idea to recycle them than throw them away," Klooster said.
Terracycle Marketing Director James Artis said big companies pay the
operations costs, which gives the his company its raw material.
Even though Clif Bar is paying for 500 organizations to ship its wrappers to Terracycle, all foil wrappers are accepted.
Most businesses collect wrappers from products in their particular
industry, so many bike shops and gyms are in the Clif Bar program.
U.S. Airborne, a gymnastics team in Cascade Township in Kent County,
has been collecting wrappers for about two months. Team mom Val Mas
said the team will collect 2 cents for each wrapper collected — they
have less than 250 so far.
"Obviously, it's not about the money," Mas said. "We just started it to be environmentally responsible."
Artis said it seems like a lot of companies add 20 percent to the price when the word "organic" is in the title.
"We want to prove you can really be a good company that's not
harming the environment and still turn a profit," he said. "We're
changing the whole mindset of just doing business as usual."
Terracycle's first product was Worm Poop, a garden fertilizer that
is made from 100-percent trash. Szaky didn't have the funding to pay
for bottles at first, so he walked around Princeton's campus picking
20-ounce bottles out of trash cans. Worm Poop is still sold in those
bottles.
The fertilizer's spray tops are other company's leftovers and the cardboard shipping boxes are other company's misprints.
The company now sells fertilizers, home cleaners, composting bin and
other products at stores like Wal-Mart, Home Depot and OfficeMax. They
sell reusable grocery bags, which are made out of plastic throw-away
grocery bags, and other goods at Target stores.
On the Net:
www.terracycle.net
