The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine

Two years ago, TerraCycle, a company that sells worm poop fertilizer in a recycled soda bottle, deservedly earned the "Sparkly Green Tiara Award" bestowed by The Dirt DIVA Royal Horticultural Society. Worm Poop! Yup, you read that right. Worm poop in a bottle. Now that's American ingenuity. This year, Tom Szaky, CEO of the company has written a book entitled Revolution in a Bottle, (Penguin Group) which outlines the tumultuous path his company has endured to redefine green business.

Opening with a chapter titled Up to My Neck, the author recounts his days in a Princeton University dorm room where he and his friend Jon Beyer witnessed a classmate feeding food scraps to a box of worms. The worms were fed in exchange for their castings, which are loaded with abundant nutrients to support plant health and growth. The next summer Szaky, Beyer and pals took all of the Princeton Dining Services waste and processed them in their prototype 'Worm Gin.' "Things quickly went from bad to worse," laments Szaky. Clogging wood chipper, brewed sludge, police arrest for stealing garbage, maggot breeding, working in the rain at night at the dumpster amongst rancid odors, and employees who puked & quit on the spot. But by the end of the summer, they had miraculously perfected their processing and found their first investor.

TerraCycle was named one of the 100 most innovative companies by Red Herring magazine and has been awarded the Environmental Stewardship Award from Home Depot Canada. In 2006, an Inc. magazine cover story called TerraCycle "The coolest little Startup in America." Though it started out bottling worm poop fertilizer, TerraCycle today is aiming to consistently churn out new 'upcycled' products by transforming garbage into viable goods, and make boatloads of money. Amen. According to the book, Americans generate about one ton of garbage each year per person or 250 million tons together. So much waste has been tossed into the oceans that there's an accumulation of floating plastics the size of Texas slowly drifting in the Pacific. "Why can't everything be made from waste?" asks Szaky. "I'm looking at waste as an entirely modern, man-made idea. I stopped viewing garbage as garbage and instead slowly started to see it as a commodity." Szaky argues that eco-friendly businesses have to match the prices of their mainstream competition. Most consumers are eager to "buy green" but not if it costs too much.

Revolution in a Bottle is just the right amount of entertainment, education and even suspense, to keep you reading on, even if it's just to see how Szaky's going to keep the company afloat when he's down to his last 500 dollars in the bank and being sued for millions from a giant competitor. A chapter is given to "Suedbyscotts.com." The Lawsuit actually helped to give TerraCycle enormous publicity, especially to consumers who had no idea who they were before, including yours truly. What was the lawsuit about? Scott's accused TerraCycle of copying their packaging too closely. Most savvy gardeners don't like a big, chemical fertilizer company targeting a small eco-company so Worm Poop sales went up. (Yay!) "What is amazing, though, is that in the course of bouncing back you may discover strengths you didn't know you had," says Szaky. "I can say with some confidence now that if Scott's hadn't sued us, we wouldn't be doing as well as we are."

The company keeps its overhead low by bottling their products in recycled bottles collected by schools, organization and churches who then receive a donation (visit www.terracycle and by furnishing it's Trenton, New Jersey offices with free office furniture on the way to the dump. They also regularly hire free graffiti artists to paint the TerraCycle factory.
In April 2009, National Geographic launched a new reality series called 'Garbage Moguls.' It follows Szaky and his colleagues, documentary style, as they approach multi-national corporations such as Wal-Mart with kites made of recycled cookie wrappers or OfficeMax with computer bags made from billboards.

The few critics of TerraCycle are concerned that the company is helping large polluting corporations to receive publicity and advertising space even though they're still selling unhealthy foods laden with high fructose corn syrup that support factory farms and have a history of recklessly littering the world with their non-recyclable packaging. Some of these multinational companies have actually lobbied against environmentally sound business practices in the past. Aren't we supposed to be stickin-it-to-the-Man?! The good new is that many of the businesses that TerraCycle collaborates with such as Honest Tea, Bear Naked and Stonyfield Farm are responsible companies who actually care that kids eat safe, healthy food and that the air, water and soil isn't contaminated. Imagine that?
TerraCycle products can be found in Home Depot, Lowes, Target, Office Max and Urban Outfitters or online at www.shopONLYgreen.com If you see TerraCycle fertilizer hidden in the back of the gardening department, as I did at my local Target store, ask the manager to display them at the front, so gardeners know there are safe alternatives to the big, fat tubs of chemical fertilizers that deplete the soil and pollute the entire zip code by leaching into local creeks.

Revolution in a Bottle is an inspiring and honest story that will give you hope for creating a more sustainable world. Get yourself a copy of the book along with a bottle of TerraCycle Worm Poop.
Step One: Attach TerraCycle recycled soda bottle to hose and fertilize your yard.
Step Two: Lay back on lounge chair with a Mojito and Szaky's book.
Step Three: Be grateful that planetary restoration is emerging.
Step Four: Pet a worm.