Verizon’s James Gowen and TerraCycle’s Tom Szaky

James Gowen, Chief Sustainability Officer of Verizon, joins “Green is Good” to discuss the iconic phone service provider’s sustainability initiatives. One particular advancement the company has launched is its green set-top box, which provides a 30% energy-efficiency increase with a vastly expansive entertainment experience. The box even comes in 100% recyclable (made of 75% post-consumer waste) packaging.

Gowen also mentions the importance of making Verizon customers and employees aware that their actions do matter. The company recently started no-cost e-waste recycling events for its employees, and the success has been unbelievable, expanding to six different areas around the country in its first six months. Verizon has collected more than 1 million old phones for recycling in the last year.

“We have kept over 40,000 pounds of material out of landfills, and we’ve opened it up to communities,” Gowen says. “A big part of Verizon is the communities we work in.” Gowen says Verizon will expand the recycling events to six more locations this year.

In the second half of the show, Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle, joins John and Mike to talk about how his company is solving the problem of non-recyclable waste. In America alone, TerraCycle has 10.1 million people collecting waste — about 3 million pounds a day! — to convert into consumer products.

TerraCycle converts everything from organic waste to plastic juice pouches into like-new products, in turn creating a whole reuse market that previously did not exist.

“About 80% of the products we buy are not recyclable, and those are the ones we focus on creating solutions for,” Szaky says. He notes that TerraCycle has about 70,000 collection points — growing by about 500 a day — in countries around the world.

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