How Tom Szaky Turned a College Dorm Idea Into a Nearly $100 Million Company

I, I think that, that's-- When I was alluding to how interesting the business model is, that-- I think you summed it up well, rethinking the concept.

Tell us a bit about TerraCycle, what's unique about it, um, and then-

Yeah

... we wanna get into like how you grew it, some of the decisions you made along the way, but what is TerraCycle so people can really get their, their mind around it?

Absolutely.

So in the end, you know, TerraCycle in its soul is a waste management company, and that is to say that we like to build waste-based supply chains where we collect garbage, we do something with it, and then we build a business model around it.

Now, what makes us really different than any other garbage company out there is that we have sort of two focus points.

One is we try to only move waste up the hierarchy, move from litter to management, from, uh, management to recycling, from recycling to reuse.

Always move waste up as much as possible.

You know, honor, honor those materials more.

And second, we only try to do what traditional garbage companies do not do.

So we don't provide landfill services or incineration services or general curbside recycling.

You know, in our recycling division, TerraCycle's known for recycling those things that are not recyclable easily today.

Uh, we are the world leader in coffee capsule recycling or cosmetic package recycling or cigarette butt recycling or laboratory waste recycling and so on.

Um, and so that's the sort of effect of what we try to, uh, uh, do.

So if you're, you know, everything-- And, and, and this is one of the neat things about garbage.

It's filled with a lot of anomalies.

You know, one anomaly is that in a very materialistic world, isn't it weird that everything we buy will one day be property of a garbage company? And I mean no exception.

In fact, the crazy part is ninety-nine percent of what we buy will be property of a garbage company within the year of purchase.

Wow.

Only one percent of our purchasing transcends a year of ownership, right? And I mean, just look around us and see, you know, what that, what that, uh, uh, looks like.

And for how big of a statement that is, an industry that will literally possess and own everything, um, it's also the least innovative industry per dollar of revenue.

So this is why we love innovating in this space because it's really purposeful to solve, and it's like all blue ocean innovation 'cause people are fundamentally repulsed by the garbage industry as a general concept.

It's not like s- courses are being taught at school about it.

It's not like there's a big line of talent, you know, ready to jump in and make their careers in the waste management industry.