A Trenton, NJ, company is
redefining mainstream America’s
perception of waste, including an art
form once relegated to its most
destitute neighborhoods.
By Gina Ryder

The space is stale. Between overflowing boxes of greasy potato chip bags and stacks upon stacks of used drink pouches, this place looks and smells as if a landfill threw up. If the stench from the heaps of trash wasn’t potent enough, aerosol is added to the mix. It appears some delinquent tagged the joint with graffiti and now nausea-inducing fumes waft between the thick layers of the spoiled aroma of things rotting. This is Trenton, NJ, though not the Trenton you likely know. In this particular corner of the downtrodden state capital, garbage is gold and graffiti is fine art. Here, on New York Avenue, at the home base of a burgeoning business called TerraCycle, wild imaginations roam freely, bizarre ideas are celebrated and the fruits of both are always on display. The bold scent of spray paint that cuts through everything, even the garbage, stems from the freshest creations by a band of graffiti artists who calls itself Vicious Styles, a.k.a. The VS Crew. In a city where most visible surfaces are marred by grime and taglines and images painted in fluorescent colors like some kind of inside joke that only those who live on the periphery of the Trenton community get and appreciate, at TerraCycle at least, graffiti is embraced. Members of The VS Crew can be found at the TerraCycle headquarters daily. Its seven artists hail from Philadelphia, Bucks and Central Jersey. Hanging fearlessly from towering ladders, they use paint rollers as tall as any of them to adorn massive walls with obscure characters, remarkable lettering and stunning imagery. As for the garbage? It’s legit poop. Worm waste, to be exact. It’s the main ingredient for the eco-friendly plant fertilizer, TerraCycle’s best-selling product. On the most basic level, TerraCyle is in the business of creating products from items once regarded — and still widely are — as non-recyclable, which it describes as “upcycling.” But as it gained traction, its mission grew, diversified, and the impact on the surrounding neighborhood deepened.
Opening the gates
Tom Szaky, a 19-year-old freshman at Princeton University at the time, founded TerraCycle in 2001. It was Szaky, a graffiti connoisseur, if you will, who thought the young company’s warehouse and office would make for a great public art forum. So he recruited Leon Rainbow, a VS Crew member, through a mutual friend to drench the 20,000 square foot property in spray paint. Soon after, Szaky gave Rainbow, 33, of Trenton, his own key to the front gate so that he could work when he pleased. “We came in and did one test wall,” Rainbow says. “Then we were given free reign.” The alliance between the two agencies has deepened in the short time since the relationship’s inception. TerraCycle provides a safe space for Vicious Styles to do its thing free of the reach of the arm of the law and, in turn, The VS Crew, largely free of charge, provides urban camouflage for a company not looking to stick out like a sore corporate thumb. “We are not confined to white walls and fluorescent lights,” Dan Quintero, a TerraCycle publicist, says. “Instead, you never know what’s around the corner. Something’s always being painted over and redone.” From yet another perspective, The VS Crew and the employees of TerraCycle share another bond: both are in the business of breathing new life into items and ideas typically tossed out by mainstream America. Graffiti, in most cases, is reserved for the underbellies of urban America. Its mere mention conjures images of old train cars, deteriorating highway overpasses and boarded up buildings. Likewise, garbage is considered plainly as waste. It served its purpose. Discard it and move on. The recycling movement has shifted the perception somewhat, but none too dramatically. “When people throw something out, they’re insinuating that the product has no value,” says Albe Zakes, a New Hope native and TerraCycle’s vice president of media relations. “But we educate people to reevaluate how they view trash. In the same vein, we are changing the view of something like graffiti, which spent decades being an undervalued art form.” With TerraCycle as the outlet, Zakes says, it can elevate the perception of graffiti and the artists behind it as it has with trash. With an open mind, blight becomes beauty. Touring the TerraCycle property is like falling backward into a dizzying but dazzling kaleidoscope of vivid hues, unique fonts and surprisingly detailed renderings. That effect has netted Rainbow the kind of legitimate exposure and the opportunities that stem from it that he once only dared to dream about.

Hitched to the right star
Environmental consciousness is clearly on the rise, making eco-savvy companies like TerraCycle less a fleeting fad and more a vital segment of global commerce. But even in this light, TerraCycle is a pioneer, spearheading a movement referred to as eco-capitalism. In short, it is getting rich off of our waste. And, as its stature grows, so, too, it seems does the authenticity of everything it’s associated with, including Vicious Styles.Inc. magazine dubbed TerraCycle “The Coolest Start-up in America” in 2006. Rainbow was hired to paint the backdrop for the cover story’s photo shoot. Mansueto Ventures, which owns the magazine, also employed The VS Crew to paint a large-scale mural at its New York City office. “Since we rely on the spirit of entrepreneurism, we basically let the artists go,” Kristine Kern, Mansueto general manager, says. “They came here on a Friday night and transformed a concrete corridor.” Street art in a corporate office is the type of validation that starts to establish an underground genre in the mainstream. But for Rainbow, whose portfolio includes an anti-violence mural at a YMCA and airbrushed trucker hats sold at Bloomingdales, it was just another opportunity that helped heighten awareness but not seal it.“A lot people think that one project is going to make them famous,” Rainbow says, “but you have to be consistent and produce a strong body of work. That’s what’s going to eventually put me where I want to be.” TerraCycle’s informal art outreach initiative extends even beyond Vicious Styles, though its success can very much be credited as the catalyst for the growth. TerraCycle hosts an annual graffiti jam in which artists from all over the country and kids from the region are invited to create and learn about graffiti through free lessons at the company’s Trenton home.“Vicious Styles is the backbone,” Rainbow says. “If we didn’t do it, it wouldn’t happen. We bring people here with different styles and flavors and we keep the scene growing. It’s inspiring to see that kind of interaction.” Grand concepts and movements and even profit margins aside, what TerraCycle and Vicious Styles have been able to accomplish on a strictly local scale is impressive. Who could ever have thought that a city so often forgotten as Trenton is could serve as a major launching pad for one of the most rapidly emerging art forms in the world? Tom Szaky and his TerraCycle posse, apparently. It’s a relationship borne from urban blight. “TerraCycle recycles worm shit and Vicious Styles recycles walls,” Rainbow says. “It’s all about creating something better than it was before.”

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