Sustainable Profits

The challenges of a waste-recycling business.

A few months ago I wrote a blog post about TerraCycle’s intention to create a national recycling program for all waste, even including cigarette butts. As our programs have grown, we have had frequent internal debates about what kinds of companies we want to partner with to help them make their waste recyclable (which in turn makes their products greener).

We have come to understand that every industry has its issues. For example, the food industry has many debates around the use of refined sugar, corn and soy in its products. And the garment industry has issues involving the use of leather and fur, and the cosmetics industry has challenges concerning animal testing, which some retailers require. The list goes on, and I am becoming increasingly confident that there really is no perfect product, which we should all consider when buying stuff.

A month after that post, in mid-May, we introduced the a cigarette-recycling program in Canada. It has been a success with more than 400 collection locations registered and more than 180,000 butts already collected. Somewhat to my surprise, several Canadian media outlets wrote positively about the program. Already, if you search “cigarette recycling,” we rank prominently in the top 10 links that come up.

And now, we’ve started a similar program in the United States along with Santa Fe Tobacco, which is owned by R.J. Reynolds. We had more than 220 collection locations sign up in the first 24 hours and more than 400 within a few days. [Read more…]

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/a-social-business-strikes-a-deal-with-big-tobacco/?partner=rss&emc=rss