I have mentioned Terracycle before on this blog where I recognized their truly innovative business model for making high quality organic lawn and garden products out of “waste” organic worm poop and discarded soda bottles. From it’s inception in 2001, the company has done an amazing job with it’s brand, and has expanded it’s product line beyond fertilizers to cleaning products and others including the Firelog made from a very problematic bio-diesel byproduct, glycerin. Now they have partnered up with one of the worlds largest food and beverage companies in their first effort to up cycle Kraft products packaging into a new category of eco-friendly consumer products.
What a traditional capitalistic enterprise would consider a limitation, Terracycle has turned into an advantage. There aren’t many marketing or development teams that would embrace the challenge of creating products completely out of garbage. Terracycle is thriving by doing exactly that, turning waste into an asset, their business model is based on trash, no pun intended. Their whole product development process is based on using waste as the raw material in every aspect including the packaging. Terracycle’s model is one of the most inspiring working examples of eco-capitalism, by taking material that is generally considered an industrial and environmental liability and turning it into an asset.