As the CEO of a company that proudly touts its products as eco-friendly, I am often asked by reporters, investors, and others, "How do we know you aren't just Green Washing?" For TerraCycle, the answer is easy. We manufacture and package most of our products entirely from waste -- Including a lot of non-recyclable waste. So if weren't making use of the waste, you can be sure it would be in a landfill somewhere.

But the question makes me think about the products I see people use everyday. How many are green washing and how many are truly environmentally friendly. The watchdog group CorpWatch defines greenwashing as "the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations or governments attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment." Well it's easy to tell when governments are green washing -- take George Bush's Clear Skies program, for example. Sure Clear Skies sounds great, but the program actually weakens the Clean Air Act and results in less regulation of air pollutants.

It's much harder to decipher the true environmental value of consumer products. That's because the claims are harder to fact check and quantify. Sure, the product might be made from Organic Cotton, but if it's shipped it to China to be manufactured and then shipped back, then how eco-friendly could it really be? But how do you know? Many consumers, busy with jobs and families, have little choice but to take things at face value.

Oddly enough, some products that seem like clear examples of green washing turn out to be truly green. After seeing many lawn mower companies claiming to be green, I wondered, "How eco-friendly could a lawn mower really be?" Then I met the founder of Neuton, Inc., who gave me a sample of his battery-operated lawn mower. I was wrong. Some battery-operated lawn mowers are in fact green.

Some products sound so eco-friendly and yet are misleading the public. My (least) favorite example of this is the profileration of the "Eco-Shaped" water bottle being marketed by Poland Springs and others. It is "Eco-Shaped" because it uses 30 percent less plastic than the old bottle. But what about the other 70 percent? It is not even post-consumer plastic. So how "Eco" is that shape?

Are there examples of green washing that irk you? Or, more interestingly, what are some surprising items you had pegged for Green Washing but were surprised to find are truly green?

In launching TerraCycle's lines of liquid fertilizer, cleaners, repellents, etc., I realized something: Almost all products that are sold as liquid in a bottle -- from window cleaner to ant repellent -- are in fact extremely similar to bottled water. In most cases, the difference is only 1% to 2% of the contents. In other words, these products are typically 98% to 99% water -- no matter which brand you're looking at, eco-friendly or otherwise. This is true even with TerraCycle products.

Most people in the bottled water industry fear that we are nearing the end of selling bottled water as we know it today. If that is the case, why are we not trying to reinvent all of the other products that have the same issues as bottled water?

Continue reading "Don't Blame Bottled Water!"

Here's a real world quandary. At TerraCycle we recently launched a line of ultimate eco-friendly cleaners. Their efficacy is great (same or even better in some cases than the synthetics). They are packaged in used soda bottles, with end run triggers, and moreover, they retail at a strong price ($2.99 for a 1L bottle). We've gained some fantastic distribution from Office Max to Target and have been happy with the sell through.

So here's the question: At mass market, our cleaner is a great price vs. other eco-brands such as Mrs. Meyer's, which retails for $4.99 for a 1L bottle of, say, Window cleaner. We even do better than 7th Generation which is in the $3.99 range. However, we are $0.70 more expensive than Windex, which retails for $2.29, or the generics, which ares priced even lower.

Our sell through at our retailers is very strong, so we could keep our price at $2.99 and be the best price in the eco-field but still be a premium to the national brand. Or we could cut our margin and either match or even beat the prices of the conventional brands. It would hurt margin, but it should increase market share. It would be a bold but tempting move since we may be able to gain market share beyond the "eco-cleaner" category.

What do you think we should do?

It is clear that it is uncool to copy the trademarked and patented Coca-Cola plastic 20-ounce bottle and fill it with some form of beverage. It's uncool (and illegal) because you would be benefiting from all of the work that Coke put into developing the shape and the brand.

But let's say someone buys that Coke bottle and throws it out, and it's collected and ends up at my factory. I then clean it and refill it with TerraCycle worm poop or cleaner or repellent and sell it to Home Depot. Moreover, I mix it in with other brands of bottles that come across our factory floor, including Pepsi brands and other random brands. In this case would Coke have a case if it wanted to stop TerraCycle from employing the used Coke bottles? It’s a moot point because Coke actually wants us to use its bottles, but – hypothetically speaking – I don’t think Coke would have a case because we’re not benefiting from the bottles’ shape. In fact, use all shapes without any discrimination (all garbage has equal rights).

The reason I pose this question is that, unlike TerraCycle, most small companies that upcycle waste don't have extensive licensing agreements with the brands whose garbage they play with. We got our experience in a law suit involving Miracle Gro, and since then, we have become very proactive legally. Is that really necessary? Well, I recently heard about a college student who was making magnets and other knickknacks out of beer cans and bottle caps. She recently got sued by Heineken.

Welcome to the club.

Six months ago the folks at Target asked us to solve two problems. They wanted to solve the plastic bag problem and they wanted a new designer bag to sell. We solved them both simultaneously.

Everyone knows how big the plastic bag problem is. According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. Plastic bags don't biodegrade. Instead, they photo-degrade, breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits that contaminate soil and waterways and enter the food web when animals accidentally ingest them. On top of this, it can cost up to $4,000 a ton to recycle plastic bags, and the resulting polymers are worth only a fraction of the cost, rendering the recycling of plastic bags economically unsustainable. Since legislated plastic bag collection exists only in select parts of California, the vast majority of plastic bags are discarded improperly.

Continue reading "Solving the Plastic Bag Problem"

Our entire "green" economic transition is based on carbon credits and global warming. Unfortunately that is ALL people seem to care about. While global warming is a crisis and is extremely important, it is only one aspect of the environmental dilemma that we find ourselves in.

Continue reading "Is Carbon the Only Thing That Matters?"

With hundreds of authorities out there purporting to measure how green products actually are, how do we know the authenticity of a green product? What does "natural" mean? "Organic?" "Carbon neutral?" Is being carbon neutral even enough? I'm always asking this question: "On a scale of 1 to 100, how green is this product?"

Continue reading "How Green Is That Product Really?"

I was recently asked that question by someone at Office Max (as a quick background we just launched a major partnership between TerraCycle and Office Max this week). This is a tough question because one of the conventional methods of maintaining market share is to block competition and to construct numerous barriers to entry -- from IP to exclusive partnerships, etc. This is definitely the case in a mature and stable market where it is challenging to grow the market.

But is this the case in an emerging, niche market like green consumer goods? The best case study I can give is the launch of Clorox's green line. The household cleaning category is a large multi-billion dollar market in the U.S. The green household cleaning segment, however, is at best 3% to 5% of that. Probably less. Prior to Clorox's entry, the segment's leaders were companies like 7th Generation and Ecover. These green companies have strong distribution in places like Whole Foods but almost nonexistent distribution in places like Wal-Mart (actually Jeffrey Hollander, CEO of 7th Generation, writes on his blog that he will not sell to Wal-Mart).

When Clorox entered the green cleaning segment, all major retailers took a second look, and in the end the entire category experienced major growth. This allowed our cleaners to be launched at Office Max, tested at Target, and slated to be launched at a number of other major retailers. So, in other words, bring on the competition within the green segment. It may just be our ticket to truly turning the majority of consumer products green.

Take a simple paradigm: plastic bottles. The cheapest way to make a plastic bottle is to use 100 percent virgin plastic (the worst thing for the environment). If you want a "greener" bottle, you can integrate some recycled content, but with every extra gram of recycled plastic, you will be increasing the price of that bottle (and decreasing its strength). If you wanted to go "uber green," you might use biodegradable plastic -- like Ethos water, which is available at your local Starbucks. That move would result in the most expensive way to make a plastic bottle today.

Continue reading "Will Your Customers Pay to Go Green?"

Businesses across America are facing increased pressure to go green. To face this challenge, many companies are attempting to find some way to do something green. But what does this actually mean? Is it a good thing? Or does it dilute authentic green innovation? What constitutes "green-washing"? And is green-washing a bad thing? Here are some recent examples I've seen:

Elle magazine in its April green issue made a big deal that it was going green by using 10% recycled paper. What about the other 90%, or the fact that a large percentage of every magazine is thrown out and never sold (I wonder what the folks at INC magazine have to say about that)?

Starbucks stopped double-cupping. It now uses a sleeve made from 100% recycled content, and its cup is made with 10% recycled content. But its paper cup is still not recyclable, which means that billions of cups every year end up in our landfills.

Ford launched a "hybrid SUV" -- a title that almost seems oxymoronic.

Green is definitely a major trend that has captured the American consumer and is now being reflected in the products and services that are coming to market. I'm curious as to what you think. If Coca-Cola makes its bottles with .01% more recycled plastic content, should it call them the "new green bottle"? What if they're made with .1%, 1%, or 10%? Where do you draw the line?

When does a company have to qualify why their are calling themselves green? Is it a sin to greenwash one's brand -- or is any movement to a greener economy a good thing?