The Largest Ever Upcycling Program?

In 2001, Tom Szaky founded TerraCycle whose eco-friendly products are sold at major retailers like The Home Depot, Target, Wal*Mart and Whole Foods Markets.

Upcycling is the art of taking used goods like packages and materials that are challenging to recycle and turning them into affordable, high quality goods. Beginning with making products from waste, such as Worm Poop, that are packaged in old containers, they have now announced a new partnership with Kraft Foods, that will greatly expand the number of collection sites TerraCycle has available across the country and will help prevent a significant amount of packaging waste from going into landfills.

Several Kraft brands, including Balance bars and South Beach Living bars, Capri Sun beverages, and Chips Ahoy! and Oreo cookies, are now the lead sponsors of TerraCycle Brigades. These nationwide recycling programs make a donation for every piece of packaging a location collects.

It’s good to see major brands make moves towards providing solutions for the problems they, and consumers, create however part of me wonders what other environmental policies Kraft has in place and whether this is partly greenwashing. Maybe I’m becoming cynical, TerraCycle does seem like an excellent company and has great products and policies, the bags do look kind of cool in a retro way, and the trash would have otherwise been sent to landfill. What do you think?