The Target Bottle Cap Sign

I was invited to give a keynote at Target's HQ in Minneapolis to talk about sustainable design for their annual Design Week. To commemorate the event we created a bottle cap sign based around their logo. Over 4,000 bottle caps were used - one from each of the TerraCycle bottle brigade locations in North America.

The only catch was getting the sign to them...

bottle cap contest entry

This is a fantastic entry I found for the TerraCycle Bottle Cap contest on youtube. Well done!

When is a product "green"?

There isn't a clear definition out there for what constitutes a green consumer product. For example we can all probably agree that a product that is toxic, made in an environmentally destructive way, and is packaged in a package that is not recycable cannot be considered a green product.

Now what if the manufacturer increased the content of recycled plastic to 10% in the packaging - leaving everything status quo. In that case the product is in fact a "greener" product. Can the manufacturer call it a "green" version of the previous product? Many manufacturers do. In the end of the day the product is in fact slightly better for the environment, so why not call it a green product.

Since there is no government agency that regulates the term "green" many manufacturers are faced with this marketing question, since everyone wants to be seen as green - especially now. More over the private groups that attempt to validate "green" statements are also many times unregulated and define their own rules. This is not a bad thing, except when you see how many groups are out there trying to become the "green stamp of approval." The number is staggering.

Here's another question. Say that you make a cleaner - which like almost all cleaners in the marketplace is made from 96% + water and is packaged in a package made from virgin plastic, but a package that is recyclable. This is the case I think for the majority of cleaning products available today to us in major big-box retailers. Should the manufacturers label these products as green since they are "96% natural" and packaged in a recyclable bottle? Again many manufactures do.

This behavior many be called "greenwashing" but is it a bad thing? In the end manufacturers in both examples are bringing awareness to the green movement - something that we can all agree on is a good thing.

Garffiti and INC magazine

As you may know we have always enjoyed a strong graffiti presence at TerraCycle. It all started when we met Rainbow at a party that we threw at our old office at 20 Nassau St., in Princeton. Rainbow is one of the godfathers of Trenton Graffiti - so when we set up shop in Trenton we were faced with an ugly old building (it used to be an old newspaper distribution facility - actually the last paper they ever distributed we think was from 9/12/2001, based on what was in the building at the time).

Within a month of moving to Trenton we decided to let Rainbow and his crew paint the building - they could paint whenever they wanted, anything they wanted and anywhere they wanted. The word spread and the building became a living piece of art. Almost two years later the entire TerraCycle building seems to change its skin every month.

Graffiti is truly the eco-capitalist form of art. It is considered waste and a burden by most of society (just type in graffiti to google news). So for all argument sake it is a form of waste. However, it is an amazing form of art, especially when you give the artist time to paint (this is challenging for artists since many times they pick illegal space to paint and have to worry about the cops).

So in the spirit of bringing eco-capitalism to the mainstream we got a call from our friends at INC magazine. They wanted to bring graffiti into their new offices at 7 World Trade Center, in NYC. The video (above) says it all.

Discovery Channel in Worm Poop

This was truly crazy. TerraCycle is lucky in that every week we seem to have a TV crew walking through our factories. But this crew took the cake for being... adventurous. The shoot started at the Rutgers University Eco-Complex, which is a very high tech greenhouse setting.

Our host (seen in the photo) decide to eat on of the red worm on film. We tried to warn him, but it was too late. I don't think that he fully expected the pungent taste of red wigglers. As a brief background, there are two major types of worms that live in the soil: surface dwelling worms and burrowing worms. The typical worms that we see on the sidewalk when it rains are the later. They are relatively big and have strong bodies - hence the capability to burrow. The other form of worm (i.e. our red wigglers) can't burrow. Instead they eat the material that falls down from the plants and tree and make brilliant worm poop. Here's the catch, as their defense mechanisms they taste horrible. I know from there shear fact that if you hold them they get scared and excrete a mucus on your hand that smells atrocious and takes days to wash off. So there we had it, our young discovery channel host ate not one, but two worms... the sound was off on the first shoot and they asked him to redo it. It's truly brave to do it the second time since you know what's coming.

So to top it off after the light worm snack the crew came up to our Trenton, NJ bottling plant where we were brewing some worm poop fertilizer. He decided that he was going to take a swim in one of our tanks. With his bathing suit and goggles he jumped right in.

Two firsts for TerraCycle all in one day!

Donnie goes Green!

Today was our second appearance with Donnie Deutsch for their "Green Show." A realization hit me today: green is so mainstream that everyone and everything is doing something that's green. Case and point, Donnie has a "Green Show" But the field of green consumer products that are authentically green is very small. I saw the same crew of super chill green CEO's today that I see at other green events, such as Live Earth. Gary Hirschberg (CE-Yo of Stonyfield Yogurt), Recycle Line, EcoHanger, etc. - in total there were eight of us. So today's lesson: Green is officially mainstream, but the group of companies that are fully green is still incredibly small - and all of us were under $500 million in sales. Which relative to P&G or SCJ is a drop in the bucket.

Let it rain... or maybe not

"An unprecedented drought stretching across the southeastern United States has forced some of the region's largest cities to declare water emergencies."- ABC News
(for full story: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3730145&page=1)

So we got a call from Home Depot head office in Atlanta. They asked if we could create a TerraCycle rain barrel using an old wine barrel and ship it ASAP. The inspiration came from the TerraCycle Rotary Composter, which we had developed only months ago. We were very excited to solve the problem and after doing some research found that most people had been using old olive drums, or other large plastic (not that great looking) barrels to collect their rain water. And more over rain barrels were not available in major retailers. And on top of all that most rain barrels were selling for $199 or more.

This was our ah ha moment and within a day we designed a rain barrel from old 55 gallon wine barrels that could retail at $129 - $99. The design was simple. Put a spigot at the bottom and a hole in the top for your downspout. The water from your downspout would fill up the rain barrel and when you needed to use the water you'd turn on the spigot and viola.

Someone at TerraCycle then asked the question: "What if you were a big rain barrel person and wanted to upgrade to multiple rain barrels?" So to solve that we added another spigot near the top that could act as an overflow valve and allow you to connect multiple ran barrels together.

After lots of work we shipped the first truck load of rain barrels to The Home Depot stores in Atlanta. They sold incredibly fast. Now we need thousands of wine barrels! So if you want to help go to your local wine store and buy that case of wine you've always wanted. Just make sure the vineyard is in California.

Above is our new California TerraCycle wine barrel operation. There's over 3,000 barrels - just don't ask for the bottom one. Did you ever think that wine barrels could be a waste stream. It turns out that wine barrels start in Africa where oak is harvested. The oak is then shipped to France where it is hand built and then shipped to California where it is used once to make red wine. ONCE! Then it is garbage and thrown away for next to nothing. Garbage is a crazy thing.

Busy as Bees

Hello from TerraCycle. This our very first of many blog entries to come. Check back every week to see updates about our new products, our nationwide recycling programs and all the ups and downs of building an empire on garbage. TerraCycle is very excited for 2008 with new products, new retailers and more ideas coming everyday this will be the year of the green and we hope to lead the charge. Literally hundreds of billion of pounds of waste are filling up our landfills every year. As you can see from the picture of Dr. Bill Gillum our Ph. D Chemist, we are busy as bees working to find ways to upcycle all of it! So stop in to get the most up to date info on our new ventures and find links to all our video shot live here at Worm Poop factory in Trenton.

Peace, Love and Sustainability,

The Eco-Revolutionary