Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Kudos to Recycline!












Good news to green biz - Recycline, an eco-friendly consumer-products company based in Waltham, Mass., is the grand prize winner of Forbes.com's 'Boost Your Business' contest. The big prize: $100,000.

Recycline was among the nearly 1,000 U.S. small growing businesses that entered the contest when it launched earlier in March 2007. In the first phase of the contest, co-sponsored by HP, small business owners submitted 500-word business plans; 20 semi-finalists survived.

In the second round, Forbes.com readers had the opportunity to review these plans and vote for their top five. Later on, the five finalists who made it to the final stage came to New York to give live presentations to an expert panel of judges. Their presentations were posted on Forbes.com for further readers voting. The final decision on the winner was made based on the judges evaluations and the readers' votes.

I saw Eric Hudson's (founder and president of Recycline) presentation and read their biz plan summary, and I think this is a great company with a great concept and products. It makes personal-care products from recycled plastic, partly from yogurt cups that Stonyfield Farm sends to Recycline.

The company’s products include toothbrushes, razors and tableware sold under the Preserve brand. All of their product handles and packaging may be recycled and customers can use postage-paid envelope to return their used Preserve products to Recycline.

Preserve’s three core product lines are available at nearly 7,000 retailers nationwide, including all Whole Foods Market, Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s stores, select Target locations and grocery retailers including Stop & Shop, Shaw's and Hannaford Brothers.

So Kudos to Recycline and Eric Hudson! They made us all very proud.