Book Review: Revolution in a bottle …
Szaky, Tom. Revolution in a bottle : how TerraCycle is redefining green business. Portfolio, 2008.
Once I carried some bags of semi-composted leaf litter from our neighbor’s curb to mulch a new garden bed in front of our house. The neighbor was furious. “I paid good money for those bags,” he shouted.
So when I read in Tom Szaky’s Revolution in a Bottle, that his neighbors called the police because he took plastic bottles out of their recycling bins on the curb, I was totally sympathetic. But I was already hooked on this account of the first product in the world that was made entirely from and packaged entirely in waste.
Author Szaky dropped out of Princeton in 2002 and founded a company that makes products from waste. Szaky’s company TerraCycle uses worms to recycle garbage into fertilizer, which is bottled into used plastic liters found in the trash. This is the story about a green entrepreneur and his company — how it started, overcame many challenges and grew to a successful venture. A company that began with garbage from Princeton Univ.dining halls grew to a company that produced 100 products in 15,000 big box stores.
This is also a story about eco-capitalism — finding value in what people are willing to pay to dispose. TerraCycle was committed to making green products made from and packaged in waste without charging a premium for them. To attract investment, there were times when Szaky was tempted to compromise on his environment commitments, but in the end, sticking to the principles distinguished the company with their immediate customer and gave them cost advantages over other companies producing green products.
© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
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