by kevin, on July 5th, 2009
I have to admit that I have a soft spot for TerraCycle and Tom Szaky. I love an ‘overcoming adversity through innovation and smart thinking’ story. People with great ideas, endless perseverance, and unconventional approaches are my heros. Just over a year ago I was doing a series of lectures about closed loop systems and alternative use of waste. At the end of one lecture I was engaged in some Q&A when an audience member suggested I check out a company called TerraCycle – they are doing exactly what I just spent forty minutes talking about. At my hotel I did a quick search and was blown away by what I found.
For anyone unfamiliar with the company or its products, TerraCycle is possibly the first industrial manufacturer where every aspect of its product is produced using trash. Their first and most notable product is plant food made from worm poop, but they refuse to stand still and have expanded their range to now offer a wide variety of products that follow the same mission.
Revolution in a Bottle is the fascinating start-up story told by its founder Tom Szaky. As Paul Hawken states in the forward, “Szaky’s first product set the gold standard for waste: the shipping carton is garbage, the bottles are soda pop throw-aways, the content is worm poop made from kitchen waste, and maybe, just maybe, this is the first time a Pepsi bottle contained something of value.” In reality, TerraCycle may be the first company with negative material costs – in some cases, they are paid to take the material away from its source. What kind of business model do you have if raw materials are not a manufacturing expense, but a revenue stream instead? I’m not certain that such a model existed prior to TerraCycle.
The behind-the-scenes story of company creation and growth is fascinating, but even more interesting is Tom’s overview of his marketing and PR thinking. If starting a revolutionary green business weren’t enough, Tom also decided to follow a totally different path to public attention. At it’s core is the belief that people respond to, and cannot get enough of, good human interest stories. Tom has found a way to leverage the need all press outlets have for that and connected it to his ability to tell great stories.
Of all TerraCycle products, I think my favorite are those made from drink pouches. Virtually all their product lines have a collection program to source the raw material needed. Schools and other organizations can raise money by collecting the pouches and sending them to TerraCycle. In the case of the drink pouches, there are more than 21,000 participating collection groups. Most drink pouches are made from polyester, reverse side printed to aluminum, and laminated to polyethylene. This hybrid packaging makes sense for its original intended use – the drink pouch – but is not recyclable. TerraCycle processes that material into products geared to the very kids purchasing, consuming, and collecting the drink pouches. One of the best is the Drink Pouch Homework Folder. Talk about a closed loop. The very customers who purchased the drink pouches, and consumed the drinks are actively engaged in the repurposing of the packaging and are the target market for the new products. Oh, and by the way, this process is good for the environment. And that’s the real gem in this book. Tom Szaky presents his views on how products and packaging with a green focus should work in the market – not at a premium cost, but at a lower one.
Although the book title is Revolution in a Bottle, it outlines a revolution in the market, and if successful, a revolution in the world. Let’s hope so. Tell us any of your TerraCycle stories. We would love to hear about them.
[...] marketing and business development that comes directly out of a new business model (read my review here). I’ll be asking about his new television series called Garbage Moguls that aired last week on [...]