Episode 404 – Avoiding Landfill when Decluttering with TerraCycle

Ingrid: In today's episode, we're talking about something that affects all of us waste and what really happens to the items we can't easily recycle. I'm joined by Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle, a company that's been challenging the idea of waste by recycling the hard to recycle from crisp packets to coffee pots.

We'll explore how TerraCycle works where traditional recycling falls short and clear up some of the biggest misconceptions around what's actually recyclable. Then we'll talk about how it can be more responsible without creating more clutter. What to stop holding onto, just in case, and the mindset shifts that can make the biggest difference.

Let's get started.

Ingrid: Hello and welcome listeners. I'm Ingrid.

Lesley: And I am Lesley. Now, if you are here for the very first time today, or you've been listening in for ages, we want to say a huge thank you we have a little favour to ask.

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Well, thank you Tom, so much for being here. This is honestly, truly an honor and a long, wish for me to talk to you and have you here on the podcast. So thank you so much for taking the time. I know you are a busy person.

Tom Szaky: Well, thanks. Thanks so much for having me. I look forward to our conversation.

Ingrid: Absolute pleasure. So let's kind of dive in. First of all, of course. Where, where, where does TerraCycle come from? What, what kind of sparked the idea

Tom Szaky: The first

Ingrid: in the first place? How did it all happen and why? Why are you doing this?

Tom Szaky: Gosh, it's an excellent question. think it's the confluence really of being a lifelong entrepreneur,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: really trying to figure out how can business be a force. For good, you know, not just making money for shareholders,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: being very important, but that it really tries to do good to all the stakeholders, know, from human to non-human stakeholders.

And so for me, that search led to TerraCycle, because. Garbage, is such a weird, topic, that it's become a lifelong fascination of mine. and when I say weird, it's, you know, not been around for a very long time. It's only 75 years old, yet everything we possess one day becomes garbage. a, and it's just super strange, but also repulsive. And because it's repulsive, people are not attracted to it. So there's a lot of opportunity to innovate and create exciting ideas.

Ingrid: So you say it's only been around for 75 years, how do you, how do you mean that?

Tom Szaky: Yeah. So let me maybe take you on, around that particular question,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: do this on a lot of different vectors around garbage from the its economics to, you know, its business behavior.

But let's talk about its, its modernity perhaps.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: first let's, let's, let's agree that all organisms have outputs. And when I define outputs, I mean outputs that. It cannot, or its, you know, relatives cannot consume again, right? So

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: a, a chimpanzee, perhaps a close relative to ours, it has what it exhales, you know, carbon dioxide.

It has what it puts in a toilet. It has throughout its life, body parts, you know, hair, nails, whatever, you know, fall off. But then also its body at the end of its life. And none of those outputs another chimpanzee could consume. It would be, you know, very bad. however. While those outputs are useless to, you know, say chimpanzees, they are useful to a whole slew of other organisms who depend on them trees, inhale the carbon, all sorts of bacteria and, and creatures and, you know, even, you know, other animals will eat the body parts and so on, and as well as what goes in the toilet. that's been with humans, you know, forever. There's no question the key. One way to define garbage, and there's many ways, but one way is to say it is an output that the generator doesn't want, and no other organism wants it either, and that is uniquely human. that type of output only came onto the scenes in the 1950s.

I mean, just imagine, for example, we're sitting having a conversation, we're wearing clothes, we're sitting on a chair. If we were doing this conversation in the 1940s, the chair we'd be sitting on would be made from wood, maybe some metal pieces. You could throw it in the forest once it broke, and the forest would be happy, you know, because you added nutrients.

The clothing we'd be wearing would be made from cotton or wool, perhaps silk. Again, when that is no longer usable, you could throw it in the forest, and the forest would not be angry. I would presume the chair we're both sitting on is made from petrochemicals. Our clothing has a 60% chance that it's made from, again, advanced materials and there are no systems for these.

And that idea only came onto the scene in the 1940s and fifties, around that time.

Ingrid: Wow. I had never thought about it that way because in in my head we always had waste, of course, because as humans we create waste. But I hadn't realized that, of course, until the 1940s, 1950s, that waste would be absorbed by our environment. And of course we create a lot more garbage now. Than ever before.

Right. If you look at since the 1940s, 1950s, have you seen maybe an era where that garbage kind of almost like exploded?

Tom Szaky: Yes, you're absolutely right. So the two things that happened in the fifties, just after the war effectively, right,

is these advanced materials came onto the scene and were able to be mass produced. And let's let's you know, while we're going to potentially vilify these materials, I think we have to honor them for the unbelievable advancements they have brought to our lives, from medicine to technology.

Everything is enabled because of these advanced materials. But it, it also allowed for cheaper production to occur,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: You know, back, here's a great, great statistic. Before the 1940s, we would buy two apparel items per year and wear them for 20 years. Now, we did that primarily because the relative cost to our income of those items was very high, right?

So we

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: mend a hole. We would, you know, open close them as our bodies changed as we passed them down An average person buys 66 apparel items a year and wears them not for 20 years, but for three uses before a disposal. And the reason for this is that the cost of these advanced materials so much lower that it doesn't make sense to repair or any of that.

It's just cheaper to throw it out and buy a new one. It's why no one darns a sock anymore, or cobbles a shoe or any of these things. And that explosion of consumerism. Which is about a logarithmic step of more purchasing, not just of more volume, but of more range. So we buy 10 times more stuff today than just 75 years ago.

That also came on in the 1950s.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: the driver is because you know, company and or individual wants to, you know, live better and do less work. that is really fueled, by the convenience of a throwaway or disposable system.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: And

Ingrid: apparel items, do you mean clothing, but you probably also mean shoes and handbags and jackets and everything?

Tom Szaky: And when I say I just use that statistic, 'cause I happen to have it top of mind,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: teleporting into our grandparents or the great grandparents.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: Think about any object that they would have. And compared to what's in our closets today, how many socks would they have compared to, how many do we have now?

How many cosmetic products would they be enjoying, you know,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: to how many we have now. And, how many cleaning products would be in their cleaning closet? It doesn't matter what you pick.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: volume of goods has exploded and the, frequency to disposal, has become incredibly fast.

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I love to always take an example of the washing machine. My mom had a washing machine that lasted 25 years and could still be repaired, and I'm now on the fifth one, and I've only been living in this house for 16 years, and I'm like, how is this possible?

Tom Szaky: Well, but take that question, right. So let's, let's dissect the washing machine for your mom. I imagine the amount of labor hours she had to, she had to invest in the washing machine from the 1950s was significant. Like she probably had to work many, many days or hours to accumulate enough wages to buy the washing machine.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: that, you know, the labor hours are probably a 10th. Right, so

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: and let's honor that virtue. It means access to a washing machine is much more democratic. Everyone has it. I imagine in the 1950s, not every household had a

Ingrid: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: to make that all work though. way the production has gone is the durability and the lifespan of the washing machine is much lower,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: the way that it is built is much more modular.

So you can't really repair, you know, a capacitor or something. You gotta, you know, basically it's three parts, a computer, you know, and the whole computer probably costs as much as a new washing machine. And so, and let's also not, make sure that we think about not just the. The citizen, like your mother, but the washing machine company, you know it, it's so interesting, the planned obsolescence, which is the idea of making things break, was actually first introduced about a hundred years ago, I think, in the UK, into Parliament as a law to boost the economy. They

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: things break faster, industry has to make more. Now, it didn't get passed as a law, but it became of a, you know, something that, is there and it makes companies more money if you cycle through their products quicker and don't

Ingrid: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. What you see now, especially of course in, in, in clothing, et cetera, it's all about the fast fashion.

Tom Szaky: It's

Ingrid: all about materials that are being used that are not only, Out of, out of fashion soon. But also the quality themselves, they break faster. The, the buttons are not sewn on properly.

The seams are not done as properly because they, because the item is cheap, it'll break sooner after maybe only a few wares. So the consumer has to kind of buy again and again, instead of buying quality, we end up buying quantity. Hence the explosion in items that we have in our house. And it's indeed what you say, it's not only in clothing, it's

Tom Szaky: everywhere

Ingrid: in our homes, isn't it?

The, the, the, the stuff is, the stuff is every, I know a lot about stuff, Tom, so,

Tom Szaky: yes.

Ingrid: we've seen that.

Tom Szaky: It's everything. It's our

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: it's our furniture.

It's,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: project it to the crisp packet, you know, or

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: the way we enjoy our cup of.

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah. So then, okay, so you kind of realized that, but how did you kind of go, okay, I, I need to do something about this, and why did you connect it to kind of, I need to do this kind of with recycling thing.

So how, where did the TerraCycle idea come from? How did that all start?

Tom Szaky: So, when I was, I was thinking about looking for purposeful entrepreneurship or, you know, purpose driven business, social business.

These are all synonyms effectively of a business that tries to also do good while making money. And so the idea of garbage sort of came to me and it first came to me because my friends were growing some plants in their basement in college and they couldn't make them work. And they started feeding organic waste to worms and using the worm poop to feed the plants.

And that. Was sort of the first opening inspiration for me. And, to be fair, TerraCycle started as a worm poop company. That's how we began our first five years, was taking organic waste from university cafeterias, feeding it to worms, taking the worm poop, making it into a tea or liquefying it and packaging it directly in used bottles. that's how we began. In fact, the logo I drew as a worm, the word TerraCycle is earth cycle very appropriate to a, you know, worm, poop, company. But you know, to answer your question on recycling, you know, we were getting, we had to source all this waste. You know, we had to source used soda bottles, and we started having schools do collection drives to get us the bottles.

And, we went to school cafeterias to get the, the, the, the, the, the leftovers, if you will, from the school canteen. And one of the great realizations. we grew the business, you know, from, leaving college to about 5 million in revenue. So some real, you know, some, I mean, not real scale, but you know, something greater than, a little thing in a basement if you are a product company, which is how we began, then you're gonna make your business hero the product, and you're gonna try to pick the very best ingredients for the product.

And even if they're technically garbage, you're gonna pick the very best. the garbage. We were feeding the worms certain organic waste, but not others. We were taking bottles that were used yes, but were not yet crushed or not damaged. Right. And we realized we needed to shift the model if we're really gonna have a meaningful solution to waste, to make waste the hero, not the output, if you will, the

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: And that's, transformation is what enabled TerraCycle to be what it is today. Right,

Ingrid: right. So explain this to me then in, in a kind of bigger picture. So it started with plastic bottles. It started with kind of the waste becoming the hero, but.

Tom Szaky: but

Ingrid: It started in, in, in the US in, in New Jersey probably, or somewhere in the us but now it's, it's a worldwide company. So what is it that you currently do?

What's like the, the aim if people are like, I've never heard of service cycle. Can you explain to people what, what you do?

Tom Szaky: Yes, absolutely. And yeah, so we're very proud. We operate today in 20 countries around the world, nationally, for close to 25 years. And what we do is, run both recycling and reuse systems.

In recycling. you would come to Terra Cycle's website and look for recycling solutions to those objects that are not locally recyclable. It could be everything from your cigarette butts or coffee capsules, but all the way to wetsuits and laboratory consumables. I mean, truly. Any waste stream that we can legally collect, we tend to have a solution from Japan to Australia, from Canada to the US and Europe to, be able to collect and recycle it. Now, some of these solutions will be free, to the public and that they're not actually free, but they're free to the public because they're funded by conscientious brands and retailers who cover the cost for us to do that. and then make it available for free to the general public. And then if there's not free solutions, there's paid solutions as well where you could purchase the recycling solution from TerraCycle. and then later we'll talk a bit about reuse, hopefully. But, you know, that's something that we've put a lot of our, resources into, and happy to say that in France we now run the country's biggest reuse platform where you can buy everything from ketchup to baby food and fully reusable packages from big brands.

then just drop. Them off dirty, you know, get your deposits back. then we sort them clean them and they get filled and sold to the next person.

Ingrid: Okay. Okay. Lots, lots to kind of dive into there.

Tom Szaky: Yes.

Ingrid: So, but let me just then take a step back because we have here in the UK quite a good recycling. System now. Right. So,

Tom Szaky: I

Ingrid: mean, I'm from the Netherlands originally. and we, I remember from when I was young, we were already, doing newspapers and glass and, and, and all of the things, and either in kind of containers on a parking lot somewhere or being able to, to recycle it from home.

We have a whole system in the Netherlands when you buy, for example, a bottle of. Fanta in the shop, you pay a little deposit for the bottle and then you return it to the shop

Tom Szaky: Get

Ingrid: and you get your kind of your deposit back. So we had that whole

Tom Szaky: situation

Ingrid: in the Netherlands. Then I moved here to the uk, 18 years ago.

And there wasn't as much recycling as I was used to, which surprised me, but thankfully a lot of the councils and the country here has, has really changed a lot. And I now have five different bins in front of my house where I can put in a plastic and paper and food waste and, and cardboard and, and normal refuge.

So. Why can the council not recycle the things that you are helping with? Where, where did it go wrong? I mean, why does there have to be a company like TerraCycle to to do all of this for us?

Tom Szaky: an excellent question. And the first thing I want to sort of poke at for a moment, because this is sort of the big unlocking question, and then we asked ourselves this very question as well, what makes something actually recyclable?

And when you say. You know the words, this is recyclable, that is not recyclable. Or even I ask the question, what makes something recyclable? It

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: that it's a technical question that let's say a cardboard box or an aluminum can, what you have your council pick up can be recycled, and as such it is, and

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: or a wetsuit or you know, a cigarette, but cannot be recycled.

If we frame it that way, it implies that we need a technical solution.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: about, we haven't invented the technology to recycle A versus B. And the unlock, and it was a tremendous unlock for me, is to first note that recycling is not a public service like it like medicine is. So what I mean by that is it, let's say we have a sickness The way most medical systems work, well, especially say the UK or Netherlands, is that if the cure exists, you would expect to get it. And if the cure doesn't exist, then you will hope and pray for research and development to invent the cure, you know, in your lifetime. And that's because it's, you know, it's, there's a Hippocratic Oath that you must, you know, receive care.

And, that's generally how it works. As a public service, recycling is an open for-profit business loop. And what I mean by that is there is no Hippocratic oath, no actor has to be behave. So as a consumer, you, the only law that exists in circular economy for you is you're not allowed to litter. Other than that, there are no laws. Or anything that says you must recycle the aluminum can in the recycling bin, you could put the aluminum can in the garbage and there'd be no problem. The recycling companies who pick it up, there's no law that says they have to recycle what they collect. Sort of crazy. You have to let that sink in for a moment, right then. there's no law that says a manufacturer must use recycled content to make its goods, and there's no law saying that they must make those goods compatible with local recycling. Now, it doesn't mean it's broken, it just means it's an open, free market system,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: What actually makes something recyclable is one thing only, the garbage company who's doing the recycling can make money. Let me ask you it as a simple question, if I may. Let's imagine you are, on the street and it's you, it's not anyone else. It's exactly you. And you see, on the ground and they're both filthy, like super dirty. One cup is made from solid gold other is made from thin plastic. Which cup do you pick up or do you pick up? Neither or both.

Ingrid: oh, that is a very good question. I would, knowing me, I'll probably pick up both.

Tom Szaky: Okay. But let's just say, because this may be hard with you. Let's say if you imagined you're an average person, which would you

Ingrid: Yeah, you pick, you pick up the gold one because it's worth money,

Tom Szaky: and why not the plastic?

Ingrid: because it's considered

Tom Szaky: well,

Ingrid: useless. Like, yeah, no,

Tom Szaky: with the idea here for a moment.

Ingrid: yeah.

Tom Szaky: cup you picked up because there's enough embodied value in the material it's made from, the gold is valuable. You could sell it to a jewelry store to two steps down

Ingrid: Yeah,

Tom Szaky: the plastic cup. What would get you to pick it up? Would it be fair if there was also some money in the cup? Maybe you'll pick it up.

Ingrid: I would probably pick it up if I knew there was a garbage can close by that I can deposit it in.

Tom Szaky: Right, but you're doing a good service. I mean, you pick it up and you use it for something, not just doing a good thing, you

Ingrid: Okay.

Tom Szaky: would not pick it up 'cause the plastic is not worth it. I imagine if I left some money in the cup, maybe at the right amount of money, you would pick it up

Ingrid: Yeah,

Tom Szaky: do something.

Ingrid: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tom Szaky: is actually how recycling works. Either the value has to be in the object

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: recyclers can get that value and they will only bother doing it if the value of the output. Is greater than the cost of collecting it

Ingrid: It, yeah.

Tom Szaky: with it.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: like the gold Cup. Now,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: TerraCycle works is it only focuses on these objects, which remind you 95% of all objects in our lives that cost more to collect and process than the results are worth by getting someone to pay. Whatever it really costs to collect it and process it minus what the residual material is worth.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: And the crazy part about this whole thing is that every to tomorrow we buy more than today, and the percent of what is profitable to recycle is lower tomorrow than today for one key reason, which is what we talked about at the beginning, which is everything is cheaper tomorrow than today. So as we cheapen goods, which increases consumption. We also lower intrinsically their ability to naturally get recycled. So in summary, what I would say is, let's not use the words can be or cannot be recycled. Everything can be, it's whether it is profitable to recycle or not profitable to recycle. And that's why the councils don't collect pens and you know, furniture and clothing and, you know, and all these different things because they would lose money on every

Ingrid: one of them yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So what you are saying to me here is like bombshell, everything can be recycled.

Tom Szaky: Yes. Yeah. Yep. The

Ingrid: Okay.

Tom Szaky: to be fair is if the law doesn't allow it, certain controlled substances, medical, you know, things that may have, you know, medical contamination, hazardous waste, these little, but this is less than 1% of all the

Ingrid: waste that is produced who have a lot of clutter in their house, and of course that's what we're I, we run a podcast for people who are like, I want to declutter. I need to learn how. And people have a lot of clutter in their homes and they often say, but I'm not decluttering it because I feel wasteful,

Tom Szaky: I

Ingrid: and it, it can't go anywhere.

So, but you are now saying that everything can be recycled. Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: right?

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: the object, so if you have stuff in your home, right, the, the stuff will fall into really one of two macro categories. It has enough value that you can recycle it or can resell it, right? If it's a simple object like an aluminum can, your local recycling will likely accept it, 'cause that aluminum is valuable enough. So that a garbage company is interested in dealing with it. And if it's more bigger objects, then maybe there are some things that are valuable enough and then you can resell them on eBay or on secondary markets, flea markets, so on and so forth. else you will need to end up paying someone well either to get rid of it and landfill it, or if you wanna have a higher purpose to recycle it.

Ingrid: I'm gonna go for a break, listeners. I'm like, okay. Okay listeners, let's go for a break and we're gonna come right back because I have more questions for Tom.

Alright, Tom. Thanks Tom. Thanks so much. I mean, it was a bit of a bombshell before, before the break when you said everything is recyclable, it just depends on if it's gonna cost a lot of money to recycle it or if it's going to be easy to recycle it and either your council picks it up or you try and sell it or donate it or anything like that.

So, because we deal with a lot of people who have a lot of clutter and they worry a lot about the environment,

Tom Szaky: Which

Ingrid: sounds. Interesting because they've bought all the stuff in the first place, but then they struggle to let it go because they worry of the impact on the environment. So if you, what would your advice be to people then who have a lot of clutter?

Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: excellent question, and I think if I go one step above, right,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: the most important thing that we have to accept, because that's the genesis of clutter,

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: and the accumulation of stuff is. No matter what environmental topic we care about, let's say we care about deforestation or biodiversity loss or climate change, or as I, you know, focus on waste, environmental trauma on the planet is begins with our act of purchase. And I wanna highlight that there is no such thing as a benevolent purchase. Even if you're buying used, you are still fueling more net consumption to occur. There's, there's, there's, you know, more harmful and less harmful versions of purchase, but they're all, to some degree harmful.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: we have to really be eyes wide open to that, right?

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: to me, the clutter is like the, the, you know, the symptom. Of, of a problem, but it's not, even if we solve the clutter, it's like taking a Tylenol, you know, when we have a headache, you know, we might not feel the pain, but we haven't solved the root cause and the

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: is purchase. Now how does one address that?

Because purchase gives a lot of dopamine. It's really fun. Our society reinforces it in every way. How

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: spend our hard earned money? I mean, isn't that the point? I'm also a hypocrite. You know, when it comes to this, I like buying. It's, it's very difficult, but I think this is gonna be the real test of humanity, is how do we shift our relationship with purchase?

And so a couple of thoughts there. First, let's realize that the idea of this level of consumption is extremely modern. I highlight that, that it's less than a hundred years old because maybe that shows people that life was just fine for a very long time without hyper consumption. And, how did we live back then?

Is still purchased, but we really invested a lot of our, hourly wages into fewer higher quality objects. So I think that's one interesting shift we can do. Instead of buying a lot of cheap, maybe we buy, take the same amount of money and invest it in fewer but more expensive items that we cherish more, enjoy them more.

And those items we will probably wanna mend and repair, maybe pass down. Then simply throw away, and that way you're still enjoying the same net amount of consumption. then when we purchase beyond thinking about, you know, how do we make sure we invest in good things, you, we can also purchase into circularity much better than react to it, right?

So purchase things, if they're, if they're durable goods that are gonna be. repairable, timeless from a fashion point of view, and if they're disposable, ideally recyclable or reus. not require then specialty services like TerraCycle that you would then either, you know, use our free or paid programs to pick up and and and see responsibly recycled. So I think that's the first component because once you have the clutter, then you gotta really think about what do we do? You know? are there ways to find other people who will love it so it doesn't become waste? I think will be always the highest and best calling. And then how do we responsibly remove it from our life?

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because,

Tom Szaky: that's

Ingrid: what we see a lot with in in our communities is that they come with us because they have a problem with clutter. So they start to work on the clutter in their houses. And of course, the first thing we always say is don't buy more stuff like boxes and containers to get more organized.

You actually want to have less stuff in your house. Then we help them kind of, okay, where's this output going to go? Is it going to be recycled? Can it be a given away? Can it be donated? Can it, does it have to be unfortunately trashed? Because a lot of people don't have the resources yet or available to recycle.

Tom Szaky: as

Ingrid: much as everything.

Tom Szaky: And

Ingrid: then what you see is once you, once that kind of starts the, the, the clutter starts to get less, the output starts to become more and more kind of fine tuned in. Oh, I know a good charity here that can do with that item and, oh. Pen. But when you, when your, when your whole house is full of clutter, you can't think about where can my pens that are broken go.

You're like, I just wanna get stuff outta my house because I'm going crazy here. So then you start to focus on the output, and then what you see is that people start to go, but hold on a minute. I'm doing like really well in my house. I'm doing really well with the output. Now I'm gonna look at that.

Purchase at that coming into my house. Why is there so much coming in? Is it

Tom Szaky: because

Ingrid: I buy stuff? Is it because I accept hand-me-downs? Is it because I don't wanna say no when other people give me things? Is it because and all the reasons? And once you see that. Then you really start to see like a whole transformation, but you need to start somewhere in, in our case, it's normally with the clutter and of course the problems of where, and we're going to put all this clutter, where is it going to go?

So interesting, and I love that you talk about the whole purchase because I think it's so important that you have to start somewhere

Tom Szaky: Yes.

Ingrid: and purchase is is a part of that cycle. Now, let me ask you maybe a kind of a, a tricky question because of course we as consumers, we do our best, right? A lot of people do their best to recycle the cardboard, to flatten the, the Amazon boxes to, to put the aluminum tins in the recycling.

And then some. Did she feel, yeah, but I'm doing all these things. But then maybe your neighbors or friends are not that particular, but you're like, okay, okay. But there's like, yeah, but there's loads of big companies, so like we're like doing the one aluminum can, but the big companies, what's going on there?

Tom Szaky: So

Ingrid: So. Can you as TerraCycle, because you say you work with companies as well, do you see a shift that companies are getting more and more on board with, we have to also make change, or is that a very slow process?

Tom Szaky: Yes and no. At the very same time, I think the

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: to maybe think about this question is on one end you have individual actors, we'll call them consumers.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: end, you have groups of actors, which is where we work during the day, which is the companies, right? And both of them have one similarity, because in one case, it's one human. In the other case, it's a group of humans. Everyone wants a better life with less work. That's not bad. It just is. So what do

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: want?

We want everything to come faster, easier, cheaper to us. And what do companies want? They wanna make more money with less work. So that's the first, that's how these chess pieces move. And they move similarly. 'cause it's either individual humans or groups of humans right now. So if we then take companies for a moment, 'cause we've talked a lot about individuals. Way business is taught in, in school is what is the purpose of business, is to maximize profit for shareholders. Basically, that's the essence of what companies exist for, and that's synonymous would do the least amount of work and make the most amount of money or profit.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: do you do that is the first thing is you need to not be responsible for externalities.

So a good example of what I mean by this is, let's say, you know, Ingrid, you and I started a sushi restaurant in London. And, the most responsible thing to do would be when we pull out a fish, we somehow, you know, replenish the fish. But that's a lot of work, much easier to not have to care right.

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Szaky: know, fish back or any way to fix our externalities. And business has done a really good job at effectively not being responsible for externalities, right?

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: the only way you get a company. And this may sound cynical, but it's the truth. To care. Let's say you and I had that sushi restaurant and there was no law saying, for every fish we take out, we somehow have to put a baby fish back in.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: way we would start doing that is if it benefited our business. If suddenly we did big marketing saying we are, you know, Tom and Ingrid sushi company is the responsible British sushi joint. For every fish that we pull out, we put two back. And if that drove more business, ironically more consumption. Then we would start doing that, and that's where you see companies do voluntary action. So our recycling services are voluntary, but we're able

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: get a say, office retailer to run pen recycling because we show them that it also helps their business. It helps maybe bring more people into their store instead of their competition and so on and so forth.

And that's how you get voluntary action to occur.

Ingrid: Right.

Tom Szaky: side is mandatory action. Mandatory action is a domain of laws and regulations and subsidies. So the, the laws create the boundaries in which business can operate, and the subsidies make it easier to do one method and harder to do another.

Whichever method is subsidized. that when voluntary action cannot get you all the way, that's where laws are critically important. And a good example in, in, for us, a TerraCycle is we can run and we built a hundred million dollar business doing it voluntary recycling. Like we know, you know, we can do it.

There's enough ways we can achieve that, but to get reuse to work, the reason our reuse platform loop is flourishing in France. And has had a lot of struggle in North America and Asia is because France has the right rules and regulations and I'm very happy to say so does Western Europe. We see it coming uk, we see it coming, but something that ambitious is dependent on the rules and regulations and that's why it is very important to applaud good frameworks being enabled, the right subsidies. And to criticize when that's not happening. Well, this is why in the US it's a little bit difficult now because the political environment is just destroying regulations and removing the people who can enforce them anyway.

Ingrid: Yeah, so if you then look, can you tell us a little bit more about Loop then in France and how that works? Please?

Tom Szaky: absolutely. So we asked a lot and we ask ourselves this question at every moment. You know, are we really achieving our goal? Are we stepping forward to eliminate the idea of voice? That question had us stop doing worm poop and move to recycling, and in 2017, we asked the question of, is recycling the foundational solution, the garbage?

And I say, is a recycling company? We got to the answer of no, it's

Ingrid: Okay.

Tom Szaky: for the symptom, right?

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: your home is great to the symptom, but it might not solve it getting rec cluttered again.

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Szaky: becomes what's the root cause of waste and how can we solve it? And we felt like disposability is the issue, we also have to honor the virtues of disposability, which is unbelievable.

Affordability and convenience. That's why we vote for it all day long today. so we, as a solution to this, created a platform called Loop. and basically how it works, it's focused on what you would call consumer packaged goods, bottle of shampoo, ketchup, orange juice, wine, whatever. You, today can go to many major supermarkets in France across the country.

Car four mono pri, you know, smu, a bunch of others. And you will see over 400 products, all your favorite brands, mind you, you know, fully reusable packaging like your Nutella or William Peele whiskey and so on and so forth. And it looks normal 'cause we want it to echo the convenience of disposability so there's no refill station, you know, there's nothing for you to do.

It's failed packaging on shelf. just buy it. The only new concept is there's a deposit that you pay, and that deposit is unique to each vessel. Maybe the new tell jar is 20 cents and your Coca-Cola bottle is 5 cents, whatever. Then when you're done, there is no cleaning needed. You just drop it off in one of our bins, the bin returns your money, and then we take it, sort it, and instead of melting it like recycling or you know, that sort of thing, it gets cleaned then refilled. And sold to the next consumer. And the beauty

Ingrid: Hmm.

Tom Szaky: then there's no garbage because the

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: around and around, and of course one day it breaks, then it's just recycled back into itself.

Ingrid: Right. So I, the, the whole bottle understand, because that's what we already used to do in the Netherlands when I was growing up, but I've not heard from, the, the teleport yet or anything. So when I'm going to France next, I'm going to be on the lookout now for this, because.

Tom Szaky: just to build on it. It's, it's, you're absolutely right. This is about, modernizing an older method. So if you're listening to this, discussion in, in America, this is how your propane tanks work today. If you're listening to this in Canada, this is how your, beer bottles work

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: This is how, in Germany, for example, know, many beverages from beer to soda work. The key difference is it's extended to everything from your, baby gummy vitamins, to your chickpeas, to your can of hot sauce. Anything can fall flow in this model.

Ingrid: Absolutely. That is absolutely amazing and that, and I think you're right, instead of crushing it down and starting again using more and more materials to make it into a bottle again, you actually like we're keeping the shape and we're just cleaning it out. We are refilling it.

Tom Szaky: it. You got it

Ingrid: Instead of doing it all of the things in between

Tom Szaky: Yes.

Ingrid: and using more resources to make that happen.

Tom Szaky: Yes. And I think the essence, the trick to it, and we learned this trick very painfully by, you know, painfully in many ways, time, money, frustration, is that the way to beat disposability with reuse is to make reuse, feel like disposability to every actor, to the

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: to the retailers and the consumer.

We want it to feel like a throwaway system. But in fact, nothing gets, thrown away. It just gets

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: refilled.

Ingrid: Amazing.

Tom Szaky: Amazing.

Ingrid: So I can see you're in your, in your office probably with all of your empty plastic bottles around you. I actually been doing a little bit of research about you, Tom, so I be like looking at like old YouTube clips and all of that, and do you still have the whole wall with all of the carton boxes where people can put in their gum and there's, because you, you've taken it like f in your office.

Of course. So many steps further than at the moment we can.

Tom Szaky: But

Ingrid: it was fascinating for me to see that even gum can be recycled.

Tom Szaky: Like I said, everything gum is not

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: It's just a rubber compound with, sugar and some flavor.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: in fact can be recycled into a polymer or a plastic at about

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: used chewing gum, believe it or not.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: Now

Ingrid: what I saw when, because if people want to know more about, TerraCycle, they can go to terracycle.com and one of the things I saw is that what you sell is a box to put blister packs in. And I think that's, I find that very interesting. So. How does that work? Because indeed, at the moment is we, we can return medication that's not used to the pharmacy because of course we don't want old medication to be thrown away.

But you always stuck with the blister packs, right? The, the, where the medication is in. But then

Tom Szaky: that

Ingrid: feels something that I could not put in recycling for some reason.

Tom Szaky: correct.

Ingrid: It, yeah.

Tom Szaky: let's, let's, this is a great way to, you know, sort of, zoom out and look at everything we talked about.

Why can't you put it into recycling is not because it can't be recycled because it costs more to collect and process than the results are worse. So garbage companies won't bother.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: both free at TerraCycle free and paid blister pack recycling. If you're in the UK for example, many super

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: have one of our boxes and you can drop them off there, for free.

And it's incredible. One of those. Locations that Superdrug collects and recycles with TerraCycle, I think 10,000 blister packs per store, per month. it's unbelievable.

Ingrid: Wow.

Tom Szaky: Now if you can't access a free solution, you can ask access a paid solution. and effectively what we do when we receive the blister packs is we first shred them. Then we wash them because we have to remove residual cause, content. Sometimes people leave a pill inside, but no matter what, there's always going to be pill residue that you

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: see little dust, you know, that's

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: what is a pill? Compressed dust. Anyway.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: once we've cleaned it, we then separate the plastic component.

From the fiber, if there is fiber, and from the metal, because each one's made a little bit differently, once

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: the metal that can be recycled into new metal, the fiber into new fiber and the, the polymers or the plastics into new plastics. And that's, it's like deconstructing, if you will, the waste.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: we just do the opposite of a manufacturing facility.

Ingrid: Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. definitely listeners, if you're interested of what kind of containers are available, what you can recycle for free, what kind of re containers you can buy to recycle all these things, check out TerraCycle um.com because it's fascinating to see. And I know because actually one of, our members in our community bought one of your pill recycling containers because.

She's like, we take a lot of medication, my husband and I, and it feels bad to throw all of these blister packs into the, into the bin. That feels like the wrong thing to do. So that is something that she did. So how can people incorporate it? Because it's another container in our houses, right?

Tom Szaky: Yeah, it's absolutely. Look, I think the general approach to everything we've said is, again, begin with where you buy Now, some things are mandatory.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: you have to have, just like if

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: you must buy your diapers, right?

So I have deep empathy that some of the things we buy, we don't feel like there's any choice. Some things we have choice on. Let's just be aware that everything

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Tom Szaky: and what we buy. Then

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: let's encourage, you know, as much local composting, recycling, and then certainly specialty services like TerraCycle you can use and note behind the scenes. invest all of our profits into reuse so we can move, you know, into a much,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: you know, bigger and better system. One day I hope that those pills come in reusable vessels,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: is no blister pack. But to

Ingrid: Yeah.

Tom Szaky: that, which is much more challenging from a business point of view, need to begin with recycling.

And in fact, recycling is what fuels in our world, the TerraCycle. We used to even be funded and occur. it's

Ingrid: absolutely. Fantastic. And thank you so much for explaining all the good work that you're doing, both in with TerraCycle also now with Loop. giving people an opportunity to recycle and creating more awareness, I think as well that ev a

Tom Szaky: Nearly

Ingrid: just about. Everything can be recycled. It's just finding the right outlet, but also, you know, looking at the, the influx of stuff in our homes as well.

That's never a one. You can't just focus on recycling. You have to also look at the purchasing. So thank you so much for this conversation. I've really enjoyed it. really learned listeners. Has this kind of made you going, oh my gosh, I need to look at the better output, but I also need to look at the purchasing that I do in my house.

What is the one step that you can do, after listening to this podcast, interview, what can you do at home to, to make it work better for you? Tom, thank you very much. If people want to know more about TerraCycle, what's the best place to go beside the website?

Tom Szaky: I would actually say the website is by far the very best. There's a

Ingrid: Okay.

Tom Szaky: amount of information there, so please start there. Select the country where you live in. We, very good chance that we've operated there for close to 20 years and, look forward to hearing from you. Thank

Ingrid: Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. It's really much appreciated.

Tom Szaky: Thank you for yours