Wow! What an amazing story, idea, and kick-butt revolutionary company. Terracycle delivers the most eco-friendly consumer product in big box retail shelves made entirely by garbage, yet with a higher quality than most competitors and at a lower price! So, how they they do it? They use garbage!!! Founder Tom Szaky(23 yrs old when he founded TerraCycle and a freshmen Princeton dropout), explains, they get paid to take garbage away and they get paid to sell their new products. Their main product is a liquid worm poop fertilizer which is created by feeding red worms organic waste in return for their castings which get mixed with water to create a rich organic fertilizer that’s proven to be better than MiricleGro or various other competitors which are chemically driven rather than organic.(or as they claim, “The proof is in the poop!”)

Now with a great product came the task of packaging it. When they first started up, they had no money to purchase fresh bottles, hence another innovation…they ran around town collecting used soda bottles, cleaned them, added labels, and used that! They saved tons of money this way and also did something new in the product world; every single bottle was different, be it an old Pepsi bottle, Coke, Water, Sprite, etc. Their spray tops are even extras that have been dumped by manufacturers of other spray-on products and even the boxes that the plant-food is shipped in are misprinted rejects from major companies. Yup, it’s garbage made into huge profits at its best!

TerraCycle is a definite company to watch out for in our sustainably driven world. I’ve seen many companies re-use recycled goods, but I’ve never seen one come out with a product that can be used again, cost less, and is better than competiing products. They also have a pretty cool name tag concept to get kids pumped about recycling. Watch that video here.

For a deep read into TerraCycles company dig into their websites video and stories, this detailed article at Inc.com, or for a quick view, watch the YouTube video above.

More pics after the jump.

The organic free stuff that feeds the worms!

From organic waste, to rich poop liquid fertilizer.

A collection of recycled bottles and containers.

From recycled and rejected products to reuse.

“The Proof is in the Poop”. Yup, it’s tested to beat most competitors and its 100% organic yet cheaper than the chemically driven ones.

A blurb from their Eco-Capitalist Guidebook: “In an eco-capitalist manufacturing model, garbage is used as the raw material. The material is processed by a sustainable factory and is turned into a product that can be re-used again as a raw material.”

“Through eco-capitalism, you can be doing the right thing from a profit perspective, and in the process eliminate the idea of waste!”

Their in need of creative ideas for use of their collected bottle caps: contest here. Win a lifetime supply of TerraCycle supplies. Send them ideas or just your recycled goods!