April 20, 2009
Recycle When It Rains A recent article in Fortune Small Business Magazine called Tom Szaky, the founder of TerraCycle, a garbage mogul. TerraCycle (terracycle.net) uses what most people consider trash and turns them into recycled products for resale. Their founding product was worm-poop fertilizer packaged in old Coca-Cola plastic bottles. Now the product line goes beyond lawn and garden into bags and office and school supplies. I applaud Szaky for keeping tons of trash out of landfills and instead is selling it right back to the people who helped create it. Genius! Maybe that savvy can help solve what I consider a huge problem in New York City- cheap umbrellas. Now I am one of the many New Yorkers who has burned through at least 20 odd $5 umbrellas sold on the street corner. I see no issue with protecting yourself from the rain, but what happens when something so often purchased becomes so disposable? The umbrella carnage on my half-mile commute to the subway this afternoon got me thinking. I saw 18 broken black umbrellas in trash cans and littered on the sides of the street. I can only imagine how many umbrellas were littered across the jungle of New York. Let’s partake in a little case study. According to the World Weather Information Service New York City gets a mean of 96.1 days of rain a year. Let’s assume 1 in 500 New Yorkers break their umbrella’s a day, with over 8 million people in New York, that’s 16,000 broken umbrellas every time it rains. That’s over 1.5 million broken umbrellas a year. TerraCycle! Anyone! Please help! What if those umbrellas were made of recycled aluminum cans or old shopping bags? Everyone these days has an eco-friendly cloth or recycled tote bag, why not take innovation to the next level? Let’s put a low cost eco-friendly umbrella on the market. Next up, low cost rain boots made from old tires- can you dye recycled rubber? Keep recycling alive even on a rainy day.

Recycle When It Rains

A recent article in Fortune Small Business Magazine called Tom Szaky, the founder of TerraCycle, a garbage mogul. TerraCycle (terracycle.net) uses what most people consider trash and turns them into recycled products for resale. Their founding product was worm-poop fertilizer packaged in old Coca-Cola plastic bottles. Now the product line goes beyond lawn and garden into bags and office and school supplies.

I applaud Szaky for keeping tons of trash out of landfills and instead is selling it right back to the people who helped create it. Genius! Maybe that savvy can help solve what I consider a huge problem in New York City- cheap umbrellas.

Now I am one of the many New Yorkers who has burned through at least 20 odd $5 umbrellas sold on the street corner. I see no issue with protecting yourself from the rain, but what happens when something so often purchased becomes so disposable?

The umbrella carnage on my half-mile commute to the subway this afternoon got me thinking. I saw 18 broken black umbrellas in trash cans and littered on the sides of the street. I can only imagine how many umbrellas were littered across the jungle of New York.

Let’s partake in a little case study. According to the World Weather Information Service New York City gets a mean of 96.1 days of rain a year. Let’s assume 1 in 500 New Yorkers break their umbrella’s a day, with over 8 million people in New York, that’s 16,000 broken umbrellas every time it rains. That’s over 1.5 million broken umbrellas a year.

TerraCycle! Anyone! Please help! What if those umbrellas were made of recycled aluminum cans or old shopping bags? Everyone these days has an eco-friendly cloth or recycled tote bag, why not take innovation to the next level? Let’s put a low cost eco-friendly umbrella on the market.

Next up, low cost rain boots made from old tires- can you dye recycled rubber?

Keep recycling alive even on a rainy day.

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