by kevin, on October 8th, 2009
I believe there is no better example of the potential for new sustainable age business models than TerraCycle. For those unfamiliar with the company, they are young (the founder is in his mid 20’s), they are inventive (they are constantly looking at how to make things differently), they have a different perspective on public promotion (press releases, web, social media, public event, etc.), and they are aggressively pursuing ways to manufacture products that thin the quantity of waste headed to landfills. Their original, and still flagship, product is plant food made from worm poop. Yep, worm poop. The amazing thing about it is that it may be the first mass produced good where every element of production, packaging, and distribution come from waste. As an example, the plant food itself is made from worm waste, the food fed to the worms is food waste collected from cafeterias, restaurants, and other discard sources. The bottles are collected by brigades throughout the country. These are school groups, children’s clubs, religious organizations, and many more who collect twenty ounce soda bottles and send them to TerraCycle who pays them a few cents for each. Bottles are collected in recycled cardboard mailing bins and are sent postage paid to TerraCycle when full. Thousands are collected every year. The sprayer tops are factory rejects that would typically be recycled or sent to landfill. The plant food is sent to retail stores in cardboard boxes that are also rejects. Other companies reject boxes due to printing errors or other issues, but are perfectly usable for TerraCycle’s purposes.
The plant food is just the tip of the TerraCycle product selection iceberg. Not only are there many other products, there are many other waste sources being exploited. They are getting quite accomplished at finding new uses for what we throw away. Material that is not, or can not be, recycled is intercepted through other brigades and is converted to new use.
Last week, Aleida and I had the privilege of visiting the TerraCycle offices and design center in Trenton, NJ. I was hoping to see more of the fabrication and manufacturing processes I’ve read about and admire, but the corporate facility has transitioned away from manufacturing. TerraCycle now contracts with licensed operators rather than doing all their own production. To scale up as their products gain popularity and the company becomes more successful they’ve wisely adjusted their business model to include teaming with companies who have deeper manufacturing knowledge and experience. Doing so allows TerraCycle to focus on design development and product promotion rather than getting bogged down with production deadlines and solving manufacturing issues. Production partners can gain efficiency that the DIY culture at TerraCycle would have difficulty matching as the operations need to scale. I think it’s a smart move and one that should help the company grow even faster than it already has.
During our tour, we were shown a large room filled with spools of discarded product packaging. Package manufacturers are now sending their rejects directly to TerraCycle to test new design options. One test product I hope we can help bring to market is what they referred to internally as techno-vomit. It’s essentially a composite panel made from fusing layers of shredded packaging material. Some are really quite beautiful. Although TerraCycle seem to be focused on using it as flooring, I think the composite nature will not wear well in heavy use environments, or in locations where heavy concentrated loads are rolled over the material. I suspect the panels will be prone to delamination or shedding. In retail applications, I think using techno-vomit in it’s current iteration would not work well on the floor. But there is incredible opportunity in other applications – walls, laminates, signage, displays, and others. And this is the direction I would like to pursue in a test program. I’m hopeful we can work something out that would get the product some visibility and test its capabilities. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Near the end of the tour I was struck with the thought that TerraCycle should open a retail space as a venue to test new consumer product viability and bring more public visibility to their mission. When I suggested this, they laughed – not because it was a silly idea, but because they had just opened a store in Princeton two days prior (I’ll post about that later). All in all, our visit reconfirmed my admiration for this company and their efforts. I think they are truly a new sustainable age business that should serve as inspiration to us all. Let me know if you have any TerraCycle experiences or stories.
Thanks you Wendy for setting up our visit, and Lori for her very informative tour.
Click the icon below for more tour photos.
[...] Szaky present before, and I’ve visited his office in Trenton, NJ (read my post about the visit here). If you haven’t read his book yet, Revolution in a Bottle, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s [...]