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Waste, Worms and Wealth: The Story of TerraCycle
A New Jersey-based company is turning waste into wealth, all with the help of a quarter million worms. TerraCycle's Plant Food Fertilizer, made from worm waste and packaged in used plastic bottles, has made the company a leader in the eco-friendly fertilizer industry.
TerraCycle works with worm farmers across the country who specialize in using worms to break down organic waste, such as food scraps and garden clippings, into a nutrient-rich compost. This process is called vermicomposting. The hungry red wigglers "employed" by TerraCycle produce TerraCycle's key ingredient to their product-worm castings, better known as worm waste. The farmer's harvest the castings and send it to TerraCycle's Trenton, NJ, facility where it's steeped in water for a week to make "worm tea." The worm tea is then packaged in used plastic spray bottles and ready for fertilizer use.
Many of the bottles TerraCycle uses for packaging are collected through their Bottle Brigade Fundraiser, where schools and nonprofit organizations across the United States and Canada earn money for bottles collected. The money earned can be used to benefit their own organization or can be donated to a preferred environmental organization. Through this effort, TerraCycle has reused almost 2 million bottles. In addition, TerraCycle uses excess spray tops and cardboard boxes donated from other companies to top and ship their fertilizer bottles, respectively.
To further minimize waste, TerraCycle puts the post-brew vermicompost, the compost remaining after brewing the worm tea, to good use. The vermicompost is used to make a potting mix product which is packaged in recycled milk jugs.
Vermicomposting an ideal method for apartment dwellers or small offices to reduce solid waste, create high-quality compost and/or liquid fertilizer similar to TerraCycle's product. Vermicomposting has only a few basic requirements:
- Worms;
- Worm bedding (e.g., shredded newspaper, cardboard);
- Organic matter such as food scraps; and
- A bin.
The primary responsibility is to keep the worms alive and healthy by providing the proper conditions and sufficient food.
There are big benefits in using worms for composting, especially greater speed in composting. One pound of mature worms (approximately 800-1,000) can eat up to half a pound of organic material per day.
TerraCycle's vermicomposting and package recycling efforts exemplify activities encouraged by our Resource Conservation Challenge within the national priority area of Municipal Solid Waste and Recycling.
For More Information:
- Learn more about vermicomposting
- RCC national priority area: Municipal Solid Waste Recycling
- EPA’s Organic Materials Web area
- TerraCycle Inc.
