Our waste crisis is only growing

Humanity started recognizing waste as an issue because of unsightly litter, bringing about anti-litter laws. Then came the first Earth Day in 1970, which birthed the modern environmental movement and led to the invention of recycling.

Now, 70 years since the modern idea of waste emerged, it’s a fast-growing crisis. We create products that nature doesn’t have systems to digest. We buy things we don’t need, use them for a short period of time, and dispose of them. The vast majority of this material is burned in incinerators, buried in landfills, or littered.

Only a small amount of our waste is recycled or reused. Each year, we use the resources of nearly two planets, and we throw out over two billion tons of trash.

Cumulative plastic waste generation and disposal
Cumulative plastic waste generation and disposal

Learn more about how to solve waste by reading Make Garbage Great.

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A circular future

Our current economy is primarily a linear “take, make, waste” model. We take resources from the Earth and make them into products. Then the products become waste once we’re done with them, typically after a very short useful life. Ultimately, we need to move to a circular economy where materials are circulated through reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling. This avoids the need to extract new materials and the associated impact on our planet.

With that said, the only silver bullet to most environmental challenges we face today is to buy less.

What TerraCycle is doing about it

Learn about the circular economy by reading The Future of Packaging.

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What TerraCycle is doing about it

TerraCycle’s mission is Eliminating the Idea of Waste®. We partner with individuals, businesses, and communities around the world on our journey toward a circular economy.

We create first-of-their-kind solutions in:

Recycling

Recycling

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Recycled content

Recycled content

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We also work to clean up trash from waterways through the TerraCycle Foundation.

And see how we create innovations with waste, like tiniestBiome™, through TerraCycle Discovery.

What can we do as individuals?

As citizens and consumers, we have more influence than we may realize. We can all make a meaningful difference both with our actions and our voices.

Learn more about the waste crisis—and how TerraCycle’s working to solve it—by reading CEO and founder Tom Szaky’s books or watching our TV shows.

Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle is Redefining Green Business (2009)
Outsmart Waste (2014)
Make Garbage Great (2015)
The Future of Packaging (2019)
On Earth Day in 2009, TerraCycle’s reality show Garbage Moguls debuted on The National Geographic Channel.
In 2014, Human Resources, a docu-comedy about working at TerraCycle, premiered on the Pivot network.
Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle is Redefining Green Business (2009)
Read more
Outsmart Waste (2014)
Read more
Make Garbage Great (2015)
Read more
The Future of Packaging (2019)
Read more
On Earth Day in 2009, TerraCycle’s reality show Garbage Moguls debuted on The National Geographic Channel.
Watch now
In 2014, Human Resources, a docu-comedy about working at TerraCycle, premiered on the Pivot network.
Watch now

What were the early days of fighting the waste crisis like at TerraCycle? Read how it all began—with worm poop in a used soda bottle.

Learn more about our humble roots