TerraCycle opens eco pop-up shop in NYC
By: John Booth
April 26, 2010

West 41st Street and Eighth Avenue, Manhattan: From its constant flow of traffic to the surrounding tons of steel, concrete and glass, it’s probably not the first place you’d think of “green.” And yet it seems to be the ideal spot for one particularly green space, at least for a while.

To celebrate Earth Month and the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, recycling and repurposing company TerraCycle is anchoring a “Green Up” shop in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. Launched on March 27 in a 2,000-square-foot flexible-use storefront called “Blank Sl8,” Green Up stocked its shelves with more than 100 of TerraCycle’s own products and offerings from nine other sustainability-minded businesses.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Times Square Alliance and the Fashion Center Business Improvement District jointly provided the space, which since 2008 has been used for things like fashion designer showcases and art installations rather than as a standard retail space.

This spring, TerraCycle vice president of media Albe Zakes said, “They wanted to do something that was eco-themed, and they came to TerraCycle, and of course we jumped at the opportunity. It was clear they wanted more of an encapsulated picture of the green movement, and that’s when we started to bring in a bunch of other, smaller partners.”

“I can think of no more appropriate anchor to Blank Sl8 during Earth Month than TerraCycle,” Fashion Center Business Improvement District President Barbara Randall said during the lead-up to the opening.

It’s the first “pop-up” store for 9-year-old TerraCycle, which has built itself on products ranging from backpacks and bags made from recycled drink pouches to fireplace logs consisting of discarded wax-coated cardboard, to trash cans and flower pots molded from recycled plastic. And since the company has already gotten itself through the doors of retailers like Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods Markets — in fact, as part of Wal-Mart’s Earth Day program 60 TerraCycle products will be displayed alongside the original goods from which they’re made — Zakes says the presence in Times Square isn’t about high sales.

“We are really there for the marketing, the exposure and the brand awareness more so than the actual dollars themselves,” he said, although he noted that “sales have been solid” and the store would likely be sustainable even in a rent-paying model.

Among the more attention-getting items, Zakes said, are New York-based Yak Pak’s backpacks made from used billboard canvas, and totes from Mitz, a women’s cooperative in Mexico that weaves candy wrappers into crafting material.

Other New York companies taking part in the Green Up shop are recycled gift and do-it-yourself company RePlayGround, furniture maker and recycler EcoSystems, jewelry makers Garbage of Eden, and Restore Clothing, which sells garments made with organic and recycled materials. All the vendors will be donating 1% of their Green Up sales to New York water advocacy group Riverkeeper.

Restore co-founder Celeste Lilore says the store illustrates the pull-together attitude of the green movement and the organizations overseeing the property.

“It’s been supportive and positive,” she said. “And it isn’t something we could have undertaken on our own. We’re a bootstrapping start-up, so having a free space like that to work from has made the difference between being able to do it and having it be prohibitive.”

Green Up also is an effort to shape people’s opinions and get them to play a more active role in promoting sustainability, Zakes said. Several of the vendors are offering visitors a chance to craft their own items from discarded materials on hand, and the store is offering discounts to customers who bring in items for recycling.

TerraCycle hopes to send a message about making a difference.

“We have a lot of single-use packaging, and a lot of common food packaging,” he said. “A biking club collecting energy bar wrappers is a no-brainer. An elementary school collecting drink pouches is a no-brainer.”

TerraCycle is even looking down a new path at Green Up with an experimental effort to collect the small plastic tubes used to package common antibiotic ointments, just to see how readily they can be amassed.

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