Tom Szaky
TerraCycle

 

Mayzee Klaus
Myalumniwebsite.com

 

Tom Szaky
Hello.

Mayzee
Hi, Tom.  It's Mayzee from myalumniwebsite.com.  How are you doing today?

Tom Szaky
Good.  How you doing?

Mayzee
I'm fine. Thanks. Would love you to tell us a little bit about your company, TerraCycle, how it began, and what it's all about.

Tom Szaky
Well so TerraCycle began in actually a basement in Montreal where my friends were growing these plants they couldn't quite make work, and they were feeding their plants worm poop and suddenly the plants were doing incredibly well, and I was actually a freshman at Princeton at the time, very inspired by that whole idea and so decided to build or decided to start TerraCycle, which is a company that started as taking organic waste, feeding it to worms, creating worm poop and then packaging that in used soda bottles which we then proceeded to sell to places like Home Depot and Wal-Mart, these large retail outfits.  Since them, TerraCycle has grown to become a company where we will pay you to send us all your different garbage, whether it's a candy wrapper or a Frito Lay chip bag or a juice pouch.  We'll actually pay the shipping, donate $0.02 (inaudible) waste to you; and then when once we collect that waste, make all sorts of really fantastic products from it.  That's sort of how - - where TerraCycle is at this point.  We're diverting almost half billion units of waste every year, and that's doubling in size every year too, so the Company's really been exploding in this spectacular way.

Mayzee
Wow. 

Tom Szaky
Yeah.

Mayzee
Thats incredible.  How do you see TerraCycle changing sort of the idea of how we think about business and the ecology?



Tom Szaky
Well the key thing that I think is sort of funny is many times people look at green business and say, "Is it either about the environment or is it about making money?  Sort of and almost implying that if you do one, you're going to not do the other well, and thats been typically true.  A lot of green businesses haven't been incredibly lucrative and have stayed small, while a lot of (inaudible) lucrative businesses have been horrible for the environment. But what we try to show at TerraCycle is that fundamentally you can do both, be very lucrative and do the right thing for the environment at the same time, and that there's a whole range of ways to do business that fall into that really fun interesting. 

Mayzee
That is fascinating.  Tell us a little bit about your new book, Revolution in a Bottle.

Tom Szaky
Well so, yeah, Revolution in a Bottle just came out. Its with Penguin, available everywhere, and Revolution in a Bottle follows the first five years of  TerraCycle from starting the business, dropping out of Princeton to going all the way to where we are today, which is becoming this really amazing solution for garbage across the world, and it's fun. It's got some neat parts in it about how - - and things I picked over the years of building the Company and hopefully it is a fun read.  It also has a really cool cover on it that's sponsored by Bear Naked Granola, you can actually remove the cover and send us your granola packages for free and then we'll donate or Bear Naked will donate a dollar to do the Arbor Day Foundation. 

Mayzee
That sounds, That's incredible.  Everything you do is eco-friendly,  I love it. That is wonderful.

Tom Szaky
Yeah, we try to be.

Mayzee
You're doing a great job.  Thank you so much for doing what you are doing and great luck with your business as well as your new book. I wish you well. Thank you. 

Tom Szaky
Thank you.

Mayzee
All right, take care.  Bye-bye.

Tom Szaky
You too. Bye.