Date: 2007-09-14 12:30 Subject: Boycotting Scotts Miracle Grow Security: Public Location: around Mood: calm Music: Virgin Radio UK - msng Tags: boycott, scotts, terracycle

I meant to post this last week and completely forgot. My bad. I was listening to the news on NPR on my way to work. They were doing a story about an interesting sounding company, TerraCycle and their organic gardening product. Long, gross story short, it's worm poop. In case you aren't aware, worms and worm poop are great for gardens. What really caught my attention about this company is their entire deal is that they reuse waste. The packaging is recycled soda bottles! They collect them, remove the labels, wash them and reuse them with new labels! I thought this was a great way to reuse these again instead of being tossed in a landfill.

You can read on their site how this company came into being, but long story short, it's a small, inner-city company founded by a group of friends when they were in college. They cared about the environment and wanted to create an environmentally friendly company.

So what does this have to do with my boycotting Scotts Miracle Grow? Well, it seems that Scotts couldn't be happy with their estimated 60%+ share of the gardening market and they are suing TerraCycle. They are suing on the bases of false advertising and similar product packaging and said packaging will confuse Scotts customers and they'll buy the wrong product. Apparently Scotts takes their customers for morons. I've looked at both packages and fail to see a similarity. I would not confuse the two products. I don't think many people would....that big TERRACYCLE printed on one product might help with that "confusion".

It's really sad that Scotts feels so threatened by this little tiny company that they feel the need to file a lawsuit. I guess if they can't have a total monopoly they pull out their big bully attorneys and go to town drowning the little guy in legal paperwork. *sigh*

So I'll be doing my part to help the little guys. While I have always bought Scotts products (their organic stuff) in the past, no more! I will either find a local store to buy TerraCycle from or I'll order it from their website. I do A LOT of gardening, my yard is full of flower beds. Those beds will be Scotts free from now on! Yes, pun intended.