3p Contributor: Tom Szaky
Recent Articles
Is Cash The Key to Motivating Green Business Behavior?
What motivates consumers to make more sustainable choices? A desire to “save the planet?” A drive to improve the health of their community? To preserve their own or their children’s health? Ego? Probably a mix of all of these. And sometimes it’s money.
At the end of 2010, TerraCycle partnered with the Walmart Foundation to do the Trash To Cash Collection contest. It’s simple: New Jersey public schools competed to see which could collect the most trash to upcycled/recycled by TerraCycle. The top 6 schools would receive a total of $125,000 in grants.
Did it work?
SunChips: The Crinkle Heard Round The World
Something astounding happened recently. A crumpling bag caused a company to crumple up years of effort and commitment to a green packaging innovation and toss it in the bin.
Yes, the much touted fully compostable bag for SunChips was released this year, with high expectations and many other companies paying close attention. And what happened? People complained about, of all things, that the packaging was, wait for it…Noisy.
Noisy!? Yes, the noise that consumers made about it was loud enough that SunChips are transitioning back to conventional packaging for all but one size, one flavor of SunChips in America. Canada? Standing strong, with a sense of humor.
What does this say about the state of green products? The American consumer?
How to Green Your Office In A Trashy Way
If you’re a green company, should you likewise have a green office?
Some would say it depends on how public facing your company is, how curious your customers are, and how much they care. Others would say that no matter how visible the “behind the curtain” aspects of your company are to the rest of the world, having a work environment that walks the talk just as much as the rest of your company and its offerings do is a crucial thing.
Why?
Because employees, especially the upcoming millennial generation, will be that much clearer that your company is one they can deeply invest themselves in, be proud to be a part of, and tell others about. When they do this, It’s a powerful, authentic endorsement of your business that, via the social media channels that are becoming an everyday part of people’s lives, can be amplified and spread broadly. A no cost form of marketing if you will.
Now At 6 Walmarts: A Big Giant Excuse Destroyer
A frequent topic of conversation among business’s big thinkers is the importance of connecting with and more effectively engaging consumers. But how can you connect retailers, manufacturers and consumers with each other, simultaneously? It may have begun now, in the shape of a converted trailer now residing in 6 Walmarts.
The Terracycle Store Collection System is something that, beyond its ability to collect absolutely every material we typically collect for our upcycling based products, is something that I hope will be an example to other businesses: How to generate awareness of your company, while benefitting numerous other manufactures, retailers, and the community at the same time.
How does this happen?
How to Fix the Broken Green Product Labeling System
I’ve been at the green business game for while now, and I’m happy to see consumers getting smarter, and a wider range of people being aware of and seeking out greener options, not only in special things but the everyday as well. But there’s a problem. A big one that could, and I feel is, threatening the vitality of the market for sustainable goods:
Half ass (green) labeling.
What do I mean? Just about all the green certification labels out there merely say the product is certified. Or if they say more, it’s still positive. And, with many so-called certifications being created by the companies themselves, the credibility of them is minimal to none. People, justifiably, aren’t buying it.
I have a solution. It’s going to take some boldness. But if it’s done, it will be good for all of us: consumers, businesses, stores. It goes like this: Do full spectrum rating. As in show if a product is excellent, good, fair, and not so good. It could be as simple as a point scale, detailing the areas where the product is doing well as well as those areas where there is room for improvement.
How a Company-Created Curriculum Can Work in Schools
You’ve heard it over the years: Company creates curriculum for schools, with conflicted teachers not wanting to advertise to their students, but at the same time at a deficit in terms or resources. Frequently, this is a justifiable concern, as companies have advertising and product placement throughout.
This is a mistake. No matter the short term value, the lingering long term effect is this mixed feeling towards the brand, and diluted educational offerings to students. Of all the things that I’ve done as CEO of Terracycle, none has excited me more than what we’re about to launch: The TerraCycle Curriculum Series.
There is minimal branding in the curriculum. No mention of our products. No focus on how to be a good consumer. Instead, we teamed up with sustainable curriculum specialist Cloud Institute and created an academically rigorous nine part program to be released over three years each spring, fall and winter that’s built to be fit within national curriculum standards. Free.
We are committed to this being more than happy talk for kindergartners, that’s long forgotten by first grade.
Greenwash? Time’s Up! How “Single Factor Sustainability” Will Cost You
Do you consider yourself a green company? A company trying to go green? Or trying to do as much as you need to be perceived as green? You’d better watch out. Consumers aren’t stupid. And thanks to books like Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services, they’re going to keep getting smarter, faster.
And you stand to lose if you continue to go by the mode of compliance, single factor sustainability (without considering the other consequences) and outright trying to fool people into believing you’re something you’re not.
Can an Instant Pop Up Store be Sustainable?
Look out, it’s nearly the 40th anniversary of Earth Day (now a month-long affair) and companies everywhere will be grasping at tenuous links to the occasion, vying for the green in your pocketbook. And what are we doing?
A green pop up shop , of course, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in the heart of the busiest part of New York. We are doing this in conjunction with the Times Square Alliance and NY’s Fashion Center Business Improvement District, which is trying very hard to bring more sustainable businesses and retailers to New York.
Is this a wise thing for a green business to be doing? After all, creating a short lived store space, then carting off and disposing of all the related materials that went into making it can be quite wasteful. Pop up shops have been largely used by big companies in metro areas in hopes of drawing people out into the suburbs where their full time store is, encouraging additional driving. Why would a sustainability-focused business like ours do such a thing?
Of course we’re not doing it that way. And we’re not doing it alone.
The Chasing Arrows Recycling Logo – The Biggest Greenwash Label of Them All?
In recent years, after the initial honeymoon of broader consumer interest in all things green, it’s now settled squarely in the space of “prove it to me.” Yet proving something’s greenness, sustainability, fair trade status, organic certification, carbon footprint has resulted in a dust storm of competing certifications, labels, very few of which are gaining traction with the public as credible or recognizable. For all they know, the company could be making it up, doing it themselves, or something similarly “greenwashy”.
And yet, right under our nose is perhaps the most deceptive label of all: the chasing arrows “recycling” symbol.
You know, the triangular shaped graphic with the number 1 to 7 inside. Much like labeling a fruit cholesterol free, it has become at best largely meaningless and at worst deceptive. What am I talking about? The fact that for the majority of categories, 3 and beyond generally, most recyclers don’t process them.
Would You Ever Partner with a Cigarette Company?
Waste is a problem. We’ve been helping solve it, one piece at a time, via our collection brigades for years now. Literally billions of pieces, collected by millions of people each earning 2 cents donated to the charity of people’s choice. That translates into $100,000 a month in the US alone. And we’re currently in 5 countries, aiming for 10 this year.
So far we’ve been source agnostic about it, like the recycling companies do. We may be a green company, but that hasn’t meant we only take waste from companies with pristine eco records. And really, what company is completely perfect when it comes to being sustainable? If anybody claims to be so, I’m quite certain they’re lying or delusional.
But what would you say if I told you we were approached by a major cigarette company to partner with them in collecting cigarette butts, to be upcycled into new products? Makes you think, doesn’t it? What do you think about that? I’d like to hear.
TerraCycle Heads North with Kraft Canada
Photo Courtesy of TerraCycle
The end of this year has been a return to our roots for TerraCycle in many ways. First with the opening of our first retail store a few blocks from where I first had a basement “office,” and now we’re going north to Canada–where I grew up and where we had our first major sales of product, to The Home Depot and Walmart Canada.
This new Canadian endeavor is, in fact, with Kraft–the first company with which we made a major agreement to collect branded waste in order to upcycle it into new products. In two years, our US partnership withKraft on Capri Sun juice packs has resulted in more than 35,000 collection points, millions of pouches collected, and more than $250,000 donated to a variety of causes.
So working in Canada is just a matter of replicating what we’ve done down here in the US, in a different longitude, right? Not quite.
Canadians are not the same people as Americans, and though their land mass is quite large in relation to the US, their population is not. At just shy of 34 million people, it is a fraction of America’s more 300 million people.
Are we making a mistake launching in such a relatively smaller market? I say no.
Help TerraCycle Find New Life for Old Toothbrushes
Toothbrush Terrain. Image credit: krossbow on Flickr.
Look at your toothbrush. It’s likely made of some form of plastic, rubber, and inventive design engineering, packed into a small space. After your initial decision process, where color, teeth cleaning wizardry, and perhaps recycled content and recyclability came into play, you don’t really notice it that much anymore. It’s become part of the background.
Until now.
Now being the start of another round of winter colds, one of the preventative practices being to throw away your toothbrush and get a new one. Hang on, you know I can’t let that be how it goes!
Wake Up Call: Interview with the Global Campaign for Climate Action
Something amazing is happening. This week in NYC, Climate Week is in progress, with leaders from 90 countries gathering for a United Nations-organized event focused on climate change. And there, along with 1000 events in 100 countries on September 21st, an unprecedented alliance of people and groups will be gathering for a truly global “Wake Up Call” to world leaders as part of the TckTckTck campaign.
In NYC today, people will form a giant earth moving through an hourglass: the ‘Human Countdown’. The event aims to demonstrate that the time to act on climate change is running out. The event’s actions are many, but its goal is singular, according to Kumi Naidoo, Chair of the Global Campaign for Climate Action (GCCA): “Ultimately we want world leaders to commit to attending the talks in Copenhagen , where they must sign a deal that is fair, ambitious, binding and that reflects the latest science.”
I recently had a chance to interview Naidoo about TckTckTck, and asked:
“What about this will help leaders see this as more than a well organized protest with colorful, but ultimately dismissable people involved?” to which Naidoo firmly answered, “This isn’t a protest. We’re looking to have a proactive influence on the decision making process. The size and breadth of the TckTckTck coalition demonstrates that this is something that leaders should listen to. If world leaders see support from their electorate for a fair, ambitious and binding deal at Copenhagen, they will have the space they need to take action. TckTckTck is about mobilizing a massive number of people from a broad cross-section of society and ensuring that world leaders take action in Copenhagen.”
Re-Imagining the Scotch Tape Dispenser Without Changing it at All
If you’re reading this, it’s pretty likely you recycle. You sort. You do your best (most of the time) But what about those plastic Scotch Tape dispensers you use? Most recyclers don’t take them. You don’t have much use for them, being empty. What do you do? Toss them in the recycle bin and hope for the best, or just toss them out in the trash?
We’d like to propose a different option, one we hope encourages other companies to do the same. Starting in September we will be collecting Scotch Tape dispensers from the public, giving them the choice of which charity 2 cents for each goes.
But instead of doing what we’re known for, taking packaging and finding a different use for it as is or sewing it like fabric into bags, umbrellas etc—we will be giving them back to 3M to use for the exact same use they were before—tape dispensers. This is as close to Cradle to Cradle design as we’ve seen, but without the need to radically redesign the product packaging. Or redesign at all, in this case.
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