‘Human Resources’ making the best of trash, while finding meaning

Participant Media’s Pivot aims its programming at millennials and uses the motto “It’s your turn.” But plenty of millennials have found that it is not their turn. They’re stuck in drab low-level jobs despite excellent educations and high aspirations.

On Friday, Pivot gives these people a small ray of hope with “Human Resources,” a spunky workplace reality series. It follows the goings-on at a recycling company called TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, and for the disgruntled millennial bartender or office assistant, it is evidence that it’s still possible to find meaningful work in a relaxed but challenging environment.

At least that is the impression this cheekily edited show creates of life at TerraCycle, a company founded in 2001 by a 20-year-old named Tom Szaky that emphasizes environmental awareness and reuse of hard-to-recycle materials. The employees all seem committed to the cause.

“Garbage is my passion,” Tiffany Threadgould, a designer, says in the premiere. “My ring is an old spoon. My earrings are bike parts.”

Audience of choice

The first episode involves pitching a coffee-table book on recycling to a publisher. The second is about the no-separation “zero-waste boxes” the company tries to sell to small businesses. Yes, it’s all a bit promotional for TerraCycle, but Pivot’s audience of choice has long been accustomed to having commerce mixed with entertainment, with its movies full of product placements and its pop songs used to hawk merchandise.

The workplace reality genre has been stagnant for a while, with a lot of shows in which the employees try too hard to be witty or quirky and therefore aren’t. “Human Resources” shows what happens when you put people on screen who have grown up with video cameras. Everyone’s comfortable, no one seems to be performing for the camera. Whether TerraCycle’s activities will save the planet is open to debate, but maybe this show will help turn around a moribund segment of the TV spectrum.