Crayola is paying to ship used markers, their own brand as well as others, to JBI. They're certainly trying to color themselves as green and they're spending a relatively small amount for that publicity.

However when you consider it takes $15 to ship an eight lb box via FedEx which can be converted to one gallon of 'fuel', optimistically worth $3/gallon if it's of high enough quality...and that, company-wide, FedEx burns on average a gallon of real fuel for every roughly $15 of revenues, it's clear that Colorcycle isn't green. Crayola wants to be perceived as green but they don't care how much pollution they generate in generating that perception.

JBI stepped in promising to recycle plastic and that fit the bill for Crayola. Colorcycle projects Crayola as green and Crayola can point to someone who promised the markers would be recycled as offloading the other part of that responsibility. JBI gets to promote an alliance with Crayola to investors and that benefits JBI. It's a win-win for everyone except duped consumers.

So if there's a strategy which relies on duping consumers then I agree the process doesn't need to convert any type of feedstock into something of a higher value. That wouldn't be my type of investment, however.