April 2007 | Mindful Living
Spinning Worm Poop into Greenbacks
TerraCycle’s green business success story
Picture the CEO of a multi-million dollar company. Now picture a 20-year old guy in the basement of an old office building, shoveling organic waste into worm bins. Same guy.
Tom Szaky /zake-ee/, a freshman at Princeton University in 2002, started the groundbreaking TerraCycle, Inc., in just that way. He was inspired by friends who were using worm castings (that’s “poop” to you and me) to grow “really nice plants,” as he likes to say, in their basement. It gave him a vision of using organic material that people throw away to produce plant fertilizer, and on a grand scale. “People thought we were nuts,” he says, of his fellow Ivy Leaguers’ opinion of him and his partner, John Beyer.
Chances are they don’t think so anymore. The company’s sales have quadrupled every year since 2003, with advance 2007 orders pulling in a cool $7 million. And Szaky says that they hope to be at $40 million sales in 2009. With businesses across the nation scrambling to go “green,” Szaky’s company, based in a warehouse in Trenton, New Jersey, isn’t just zero-waste, it actually consumes waste. TerraCycle uses organic garbage to feed its “armies of worms,” then liquefies the poop and packages it as garden products carried by “bigs” like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods and Home Depot.
Szaky was so dedicated to using post-consumer waste that in 2003, when the company was struggling, he turned down a cool million in funding. “We had $500 in our bank account and no other prospects for funding, but they wanted us to move away from garbage as our source.” So Szaky walked away. As it stands, the company gets its worm food in the form of stinky garbage from local school cafeterias, supermarkets and food retailers.
Not only does TerraCycle start with garbage, it uses recycled soda bottles for packaging. “We couldn’t afford packaging. That’s how we got the idea to use used soda bottles.” So they went out cruising dumpsters. “One of us got arrested in the process,” says Szaky. “It turns out you can’t dumpster dive in New Jersey. It’s illegal.” The company gets around that law by paying five cents for every bottle collected by schools and other nonprofits.
For CEOs who resist the green revolution, Szaky, now 25, has a wake-up call. “Either they’re going to become green or they’re going to be taken out by a company like mine,” he says. “It’s their choice.” — Monica Woelfel
Visit terracycle.net for their full product line
AltMed in the Mainstream
Academic study shows says transcendental meditation good for heart health
You’re sitting still with your eyes closed to reach a higher state of consciousness; and while you’re up there, here’s some good news: 40 minutes a day of meditation can also reduce your chances of heart failure, says a first-of-its-kind academic study at the University of Pennsylvania.
Recently published in the journal Ethnicity & Disease, the study revealed a significant drop in congestive heart failure in African-American patients who practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM).
Two-dozen individuals with heart health issues participated in the study. Half practiced TM, the other half did not. Those practicing TM experienced high improvement on walking tests monitoring heart rates and had fewer hospitalizations.
Professor Ravishankar Jayadevappa, of the University’s Department of Medicine, stipulates that TM improves heart functioning by decreasing sympathetic nervous system activation. “The results indicate that TM can be effective in improving the functional capacity of congestive heart failure patients,” Dr. Jayadevappa explains. “They also suggest long-term improvements in survival in these individuals.”
This ancient Vedic meditation technique — in which one repeats a specific sound, or mantra, twice a day for 20 minutes — reportedly enables the mind to empty and attain a calm lucidity, or a “oneness.” TM first caught the Western eye in 1958, when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced it to the US.
Dr. Cesar Molina, a cardiologist at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, who has recommended over 200 patients to TM practitioners, explains TM creates a hypo-metabolic state of restful alertness associated with a drop in blood pressure. “And heart failure is the end result of high blood pressure and coronary heart disease,” Dr. Molina adds.
Many, including famous film director David Lynch, believe that TM induces a state of consciousness equivalent to the basic tenets of a quantum field theory called Superstring Theory. This states that there’s a unified field of intelligence on earth and that our minds have the ability to tap into it. This does not mean, Dr. Molina assures, that TM is a belief system. “TM is only a technique,” he explains. “It does not require concentration. “It’s a form of yoga, not a prayer or a religion.” — Shuka Kalantari
The Gandhi King Peace Train Knows the Way
Anyone can sit down with nonviolence leaders in San Jose whistle-stop for peace
Back in the day, presidential candidates embarked on whistle-stop train tours to drum up support for their campaigns and political agendas. But in a year when our federal government seems — unbelievably — on the precipice of yet more military involvement in the Middle East, maybe it’s time for peace, not politics, to take to the tracks.
Enter the Association for Global New Thought, a progressive think tank based in Santa Barbara, which has partnered with the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence to create a whistle-stop train tour along the California coast featuring an inspiring group of cultural and spiritual leaders,.
Traveling from LA’s Union Station to San Jose and back from April 18-21, the specially restored chartered railroad coaches will act as the meeting venue for discussions, teach-ins, music and guided meditations. Those interested in the peace movement can register to climb on board and pow-wow with Arun Gandhi (the grandson of the peaceful crusader himself); Yolanda King (daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.); Ela Gandhi, a former member of Parliament in South Africa; Paul F. Chavez of the National Farm Workers Service Center; Dolores Huerta of the AFL-CIO, Bernard LaFayette, Jr. from the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies; and Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Viennese religious philosopher who works for Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
“A classroom on wheels is an exciting way to interact with people and teach them a philosophy based on love, compassion, respect and understanding,” says Dr. Arun Gandhi.
“The idea of having the living leaders of the nonviolent social change movement together in one place is cause enough for celebration and awe,” says Barbara Fields, who’s spent a year helping to orchestrate the Peace Train. “But now we’ve added to the equation the community of grassroots nonviolence activists who will take the movement into its future.”
By the time the locomotive workshop and “beehive”-style teach-in returns to LA, participants will have taken part in discussions on interfaith healing, youth leadership, nonviolent policy change, the environment, family and schools — a complete foundation for building a culture of nonviolence.
“Gandhi used every means possible to approach his goal,” continues Arun Gandhi. “A ‘Peace Train’ seems an ideal way to attract people.” — Lucinda Michele Knapp
To register or for more information, visit: agnt.org/peacetrain
Worth Repeating
“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”
— Republican presidential candidate John McCain attempting to woo conservative voters at a Spartanburg, SC rally by speaking against a woman’s right to choose, 2/18 (AP).
“If you set the hurdle one inch above the ground you can’t fail to clear it.”
— David D. Doniger, director of climate policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, mocking President Bush’s inadequate goals for reducing CO2 emissions (New York Times, 3/3).
“If the Walton family (Wal-Mart) or the heirs to the Mars fortune needed the news media to work better than it does now, believe me, it would work better. But the system is working just fine for them as is. The people it’s failing are the rest of us, and most of the rest of us, apparently, would rather sniff Anna Nicole Smith’s corpse or watch Britney Spears hump a fire hydrant than find out what our tax dollars are actually paying for.”
— Matt Taibbi on news media that barely mentions the impending havoc from President Bush’s proposed permanent repeal of the Estate Tax, and a public that doesn’t seem to care (RollingStone.com, 2/20).
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