Tom Szaky (Terracycle) - Recycling Everything, Reimagining Capitalism

Speaker A: Welcome to A Little Bit Radical, a, ah, business podcast from Standing on Giants. I'm Rob, your host. Join me as I meet people and organizations who are doing things differently, challenging the status quo and yes, might just be a little bit radical. Eliminating the idea of waste. That's the mission of TerraCycle, a global leader in recycling, recycled content, reuse and overall waste reduction. I'm thrilled to be speaking to the founder and CEO Tom Zaki today. Tom, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: So, Tom M. If you are a little bit radical and you're on our podcast, so we know that you are, wouldn't your early life set you up for that?

Speaker B: You know, I was born in the early 80s, in 82 in Budapest, uh, in Hungary. And it's really only relevant because back then it was still, uh, under the iron curtain. Entrepreneurship was very difficult. And in 86, Chernobyl happened, which sort of destabilized the borders briefly. And long story short, uh, my parents with me and todt, I was 4 years old, left as, you know, effectively political refugees from Eastern Europe. And we sort of hopped around, uh, various Western European countries, from Holland to Germany to seek asylum, and then finally three years later landed in Canada. And this, to me was incredibly formative because growing up in a very poor country like Hungary at the time, you know, we would find value in everything. You know, when you would make, uh, breakfast and you had the grease from the frying pan that would then be poured into a bucket and put in the fridge and used as a butter substitute in the afternoon, and, you know, so on and so forth. And it was also somewhere where entrepreneurship was very difficult. And then, you know, a few years later, I'm growing up, uh, in North America, which is the heartland of capitalism, uh, and, uh, in parallel to that, you know, because there's all this wealth, all this stuff that I couldn't imagine, you know, people were throwing out, be thrown out. I mean, the first TV I ever had was one I found in the garbage in Toronto somewhere. And it was, which was nuts. And so I really fell in love at an early age with entrepreneurship. And I think because I was coming from Eastern Europe, where you don't have resource, you're constantly creatively trying to solve everything, you know, without resource. And it's those two things together that I think really put me in, uh, the mindset that I am today, uh, which is looking for value in things that maybe others don't. And, uh, you know, fierce love of entrepreneurship and how do we creatively solve problems, uh, you know, that maybe people haven't looked at in such a perspective.

Speaker A: That's really fascinating. And when you were growing up in Canada. So from my poor maths from about the age of seven, did you notice any big differences with your peers and your kind of attitudes to waste and using things and entrepreneurship and that kind of thing?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say to me the biggest influence at that early age was actually seeing what my friend's parents had achieved because in many cases they had gone from very humble beginnings to phenomenal, uh, entrepreneurs in their own right. You know, one of uh, my friend's uh, parents started as a taxicab driver and ended up uh, founding what became the biggest live entertainment company in the world. And there's a couple of other examples like this. This showed me that entrepreneurial success can occur, you know, in the flesh. Right. You meet the folks and suddenly everything becomes demystified and, and all of it becomes very ah, possible. So for me in that sort of early age, called it late elementary school to high school, it was less m, maybe around sustainability, um, and much more around the entrepreneurial journey. And then that all happened in a place which is very conducive to entrepreneurship. You know. And uh, one of my favorite things about North America and why I think it is so good, especially you know, the United States, so good culturally with entrepreneurship is not just the willingness to take risk and so on, but the way the culture views failure. You know, this idea that it's not a big issue and you can get up and try again and try again because any sort of radical idea is going to have a lot of failure around it and you have to be okay with that.

Speaker A: I was reading something just today trying to dissect why the entrepreneurial environment is different in the UK versus the US it was talking about, but North America. And someone had made the point that a lot of VCs in North America have a rule that you are specifically banned from mocking any pitch, however ridiculous it might seem when it comes through the door. Because the tolerance for failure is often a route to success. But uh, that's very different to the UK where we're a bit more stuck up. Self effacingly so stuck up. We're a bit more cynical. Perhaps part of our humour and our attitude is in kind of mocking um, each other's ideas. But I can see how that can crush people.

Speaker B: Early on we can. And just to build on it. Right. Like, and especially having sort of the both European and North American perspective, you know, in Europe it's much harder to raise that type of risk capital, like, true, you know, venture capital, because a big part of it is, you know, if you're going to, uh, borrow money from some friends and you lose it, then what are, you know, then like, the expectation is like, well, are you going to have to work it back and give it back? In Germany, for example, if you bankrupt a company, you are barred from starting another one for a very long time. In the US you can bankrupt in the morning and start a new company in the afternoon, more or less. Right. And I'll tell you one story. Uh, this is a little bit later in time, but that really highlights the magic of the way the American culture looks at entrepreneurship, which is when I was just starting the company and first raising capital, um, I was like 20 at the time, and I sat, uh, at a dinner of some kind. I had nothing to do with me. I was just there, actually at a request of a friend to look at an organization and write a review on it. And beside me was this gentleman, uh, from Florida. And, you, uh, know, we were chatting and I was describing to him what I was working on, which was very embryonic at the time. And, uh, he goes, well, I'm in. And I go, great. And, uh, I didn't believe anything he was saying. We were just sort of enjoying a dinner. But the next day he sends a half a million dollar check. And the following day he's like, you just tell me whatever paperwork you want me to sign.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And then the magic was happening because I was sort of living in the office at the time, and he would call it odd hours just to get an update. He sort of loved the fact that he could call at 2am and I'd pick up. And he used to say once in a blue moon that, like, hey, you know, if all my money goes away and you lose it, you know what I want you to do. And in my mind, coming from sort of a more European background, I'm like, what, like, you know, wash dishes till I make it back? Right.

Speaker A: He's like, be your slave.

Speaker B: Yeah. He goes, I want you to call me with whatever your next idea is and know I'm in, you know, for another million dollars on whatever it is you cook up next. And you know how powerful that is when someone's like, you know, that failure tolerance. It's not that you want to fail, but the tolerance for failure. Because then you're like, oh, my God, let's play, let's do this. You know? And I think that's just a key part of the magic if you're going to support entrepreneurs is not just the initial risk, but what happens when things, you know, uh, turn and meander and it gets rainy outside and so on.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh, that guy was creating, in a way quite a lot of psychological safety for you to run with the idea. Right. You know, massive, like it doesn't matter, you know, and then that's, that's very freeing rather than being very anxious all the time about how you're going to pay people back. I'm sure that's not everyone's experience, I think you would hasten to say. Right. But I think it really illustrates the point very well. So as an adult then, I mean, you founded TerraCycle when you were very young, is that right? Were you 20, did you say? That's right, yeah, yeah. So the question I usually ask at this point is as an adult, have you become more or less radical? But I think for you, what I want to know is kind of what led you to found a business like TerraCycle at uh, the age of 20 where it was an impact driven, you know, uh, circular economy business. Tell us about that.

Speaker B: So at that beginning part, as I mentioned, growing up in Toronto, I really fell in love with entrepreneurship. But let's be clear, nothing to do with sustainability. It was my ticket to fame and fortune, you know, and everything around me reinforced that that's possible. From seeing it in the flesh to the culture of the, you know, the country. As we've already discussed, when I went down to university, uh, in the U.S. uh, one of the first classes I took at Princeton was an Introduction to Economics. And the professor comes in and the first question she asks in like the first class, you know, very, uh, appropriate, was what's the purpose of business? And the answer she was looking for was maximize profit to shareholders.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah.

Speaker B: Didn't ring all that fulfilling to me because I was like, look, a business interacts with so many stakeholders. Like, you know, if it's a Tesco, how many customers does it serve, employees, does it pay vendors, does it interact with etc. Etc. How many of those people actually care at all about profit to shareholders, I imagine it's a, it's tiny, tiny percent. And so I had this sort of journey and um, thinking about it and where I landed was maybe profit is not the purpose, but it is an incredibly important indicator of health. Right? If the organization is profitable, it's going to flourish and grow very healthy. And if it isn't, it's going to do the opposite and eventually die. So it's critically important as health is. But that's not the point. That leaves room for the point. And then maybe the point is how does it help benefit, you know, uh, society or the environment? And that suddenly started putting in my head, like I wanted to start thinking about business models m that echo that that are profitable but can do good at the very same time. And I landed on garbage, uh, as the topic. And, uh, it's become a lifelong fascination, you, uh, know, since then, because garbage is filled with so many strange anomalies. You know, the, the first sort of inspiration moment was honestly my friends who, uh, had gone to university in Montreal, they were growing pot in their basem, couldn't make the plants work. And long story short, one day they take organic waste and start feeding it to red worms, and they take the worm poop and feed it to the plants, and voila. Uh, you know, they had a fantastic harvest. And, you know, I saw this and got very inspired by it. But the part that really sort of tickled me was the first sort of anomaly of garbage that I learned, which is that it's the only material in the world that has negative value. Another way to sort of construct, you know, put, uh, a construct around that, is that it's the only material that you're willing to pay to get rid of.

Speaker A: I mean, in fact, we'll pay for someone to take it away, right? Exactly. So if you have an object in

Speaker B: your hand, whatever the object is, it's not garbage till you're willing to pay someone to remove it. Isn't that weird?

Speaker A: Yeah, it is very strange.

Speaker B: Uh, and it gets weirder. Right, so this is the only industry that will legally own everything we possess one day with no exception.

Speaker A: Expand on that a bit.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So everything becomes garbage one day, right? No exception. 99% of what we buy becomes garbage within the year of purchase. And even things built to last tend, you know, to become garbage within three years, five years, you know, so on and so forth. Uh, and the garbage industry doesn't just transport or do something like. It's not the Royal Mail where you give them a package. They don't own the package. They're just. Their job is just to move the package. The garbage industry physically takes ownership over all this material. They will own everything one day. And for how big of a statement that is, isn't it wild that it's also the least innovative industry per dollar of revenue? And that is the case because it is literally in the flesh, smelly, nasty, gross. You know, I mean, it's not metaphorically. It is like, that is what it is. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. There's very few people that sit as you did, you know, looking as a child, dreaming of entrepreneurship, and then it leads them to, uh, garbage or rubbish, as we'd say in the uk.

Speaker B: Right, right. But these anomalies, it's also very modern. Right. It was only invented in the 19, uh, 50s. I mean, isn't that nuts, how young it is? That is an idea as well. And these things started really tickling, you know, my brain because when you find anomalies, those become really interesting on how you can construct exciting new business models around them. And in doing it, you're also doing good. I mean, what a great combination that is. And that has been sort of the draw for me from that early stage till today.

Speaker A: Absolutely. There's a funny link to a previous guest on a uh, little Bit Radical, Matt Semmelhack, who, uh, founded Boox, who's also a Princeton alum. So I don't know what they've got in the water at Princeton. Maybe it's that one economics professor putting people off doing shareholder primacy. Capitalism. Yeah, yeah. Who knows? Who knows?

Speaker B: And you know, it's funny because Princeton is not, at least at the time, this was 20 years ago, not very pro entrepreneurship. You know, I got in a lot of trouble for, uh, running the business out of my dorm room. In fact, it's one of the reasons, ah, that I ended up leaving school early because it was. There was. It just couldn't. I couldn't do it. They were very much frowning upon the concept of running commerce out of the university, you know.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, I remember Matt saying that it doesn't quite have the same reputation as Stanford for, you know, for entrepreneurship and innovation. That's right. But he did say, you know, the world needs bankers too, which, you know, I'm not sure how many listeners agreed, uh, with that statement, but. But I'm sure it does.

Speaker B: It does, it does. Maybe, you know, the question is like, how many?

Speaker A: Right, yeah, yeah. Perhaps we've already started talking about TerraCycle, so let's move on in earnest, uh, to your work and talk about that time founding the business. Because from what I've found from researching you before this interview, initially, the business was kind of like quite a, uh, creative, like kind of salvage business where you were turning garbage into desirable items like furniture and things like that. Is that correct? And what kind of first inspired you and where did that lead you?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So you're absolutely right. We started as a consumer product Company. So basically our thesis has always been the same, how do we solve waste through business? And the first derivative of that was let's make products out of garbage and sell those. And, uh, because this whole thing was inspired by taking worm poop and growing better plants. TerraCycle actually started as a worm poop company. TerraCycle is earth cycle. The logo I drew is a worm. That's how it all began. And we not only did the, you know, taking organic waste, feeding it to worms, taking the worm poop and liquefying it, uh, but also we packaged it even in used soda bottles, which was pretty cool. So on the shelf, you know, one would be in an old Coke bottle, an old Pepsi bottle with just a spray top, um, on top. And so we started in, in that space, in the lawn and garden space. Uh, you know, we were able to finagle our way into getting into all retailers, which was a big coup for us at the time. You know, you're in America. That would be like your Walmarts and targets, uh, and Home Depot type stores.

Speaker A: Yeah. Amazing.

Speaker B: And then we just started expanding into, you know, saying, how can we apply this philosophy of making products out of garbage, beyond worm poop in a soda bottle to bird feeders? And, uh, you know, first lawn and garden products like wine barrel, you know, we took wine barrels and made them into rain barrels. We took yogurt pots and used them, you know, as planting pots, all sorts of examples. And then from there it said, let's expand even further and did, uh, back to school products like, uh, taking juice pouches and sewing them into pencil cases and backpacks. And it just went on and on. But that was sort of the original genesis of the idea was let's just start making products out of garbage as a way to solve for garbage.

Speaker A: Fascinating. And actually, now that you've mentioned it, I've seen that one of those juice box items, really cool, like, very desirable. It does sound like the kind of business you would found in your early 20s. Like, let's make cool stuff out, you know, out, uh, of these kind of iconic branded packaging, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now the business is, you know, dare I say, a little bit more grown up, like more scalable, more.

Speaker B: We had this, you know, big foundational shift because as we kept growing, we realized that as a consumer product company, you make the product the hero. Rightly so. And that means that when we were making the worm poop, we were taking certain organic waste, but we were refusing other type of organic waste because maybe the worms, you know, didn't like it as much, or when we were making, uh, you know, say, juice pouch backpacks, Certain juice pouches would work, but if they were too used, you know, a car had driven over them or whatever, it wouldn't work. So we found ourselves picking the best of the garbage, just as any consumer product company would pick the best of the inputs to make the product. And we realized we're not going to solve our dream of, you know, how do we eliminate the idea of waste doing this. So in fact, imagine, you know, five years in I'd left school, we were doing, I mean, not massive money, but like 5 million in revenue. So not. Not minor either.

Speaker A: Yeah. And nothing to. Nothing to sniff at. Very easy.

Speaker B: No, no, I mean decent. Right. And, um, we decided to foundationally change the business to shift from making the product the hero to making the garbage the hero. And this was traumatic. You know, we ended up replacing half our staff. The board, you know, had a big problem with it. Like it was. I almost got fired in this whole sort of metamorphosis, but it was very much that. And that is what sort of brought out what is the company today where the starting point is not I want to make a chair or a bag and what garbage can I make it from, but there are cigarette butts and how do we collect them, uh, and turn them into something? Or, you know, there is wetsuit waste or bicycle helmets or, you know, baby food pouch. I mean, you name it, right? Everything becomes garbage and make the garbage the hero. And that became phenomenally unlocking to the type of models that we do, uh, today. I mean, we still make things out of garbage, but the starting point is the garbage, not the end product.

Speaker A: So how would someone today interact with TerraCycle? Give us an overview of how, um, we might come across you in our daily lives.

Speaker B: So you would first go to our website, say, terracycle.com or if you're in the uk.co.uk, we're in 20 countries, uh, where you could, uh, uh, access our services. And the first thing you would start with is recycling. Now, before I explain how you would do it with us, the very important note here is what makes something actually recyclable. And this is very misunderstood. You know, usually someone says a cardboard box can be recycled, which is why it's recyclable, and a toothbrush cannot be recycled, which is why it's not recyclable. And the reality is very different. You know, all recycling in the world, whether it's procured by your council or yourself as a business is run in the end by for profit companies. And there's no law anywhere that says that those recycling companies must recycle anything they collect. And as a result they're only going to recycle what they can make money on. And so really what makes an aluminum can or a cardboard box recyclable is that it's profitable to recycle. And what makes 95% of objects not recyclable is that it's not profitable to recycle.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So it's that economic issue. So we at TerraCycle focus only on the things that your local curbside or council systems do not accept. Like you wouldn't recycle glass with us, or cardboard or aluminum, but you would anything else. And so you can go to our site, uh, you'll see first a lot of free programs. Uh these are programs uh, that are funded by brands or retailers, which is free to citizens. And you just sign up to collect and recycle anything from blister packs, uh, for pharmaceutical packaging to contact lenses, to oral care waste, you name it. We pick up the waste from wherever you collect it, say at your school or uh, your business, and then recycle all that material. And that's funded by industry stakeholders. And alternatively, if we don't have a free program, you can buy our service from us uh, as well through our zero waste boxes and other uh, sort of, uh, you know, systems. And that's the way that TerraCycle uh, works all around the world, uh, effectively creating recycling solutions to those waste streams that don't have them. And then beyond that, uh, we also do a lot on which you would not interact with as directly, but we work a lot uh, with companies to have them integrate waste into their production. So for example with pilot pens, we make the world's first pen from used pens or ASIC shoe, shoe from shoes and many other examples those you would interact with by maybe seeing them out in a store, but not necessarily directly through TerraCycle. And then finally we do a lot in reuse, uh, where for example in France you uh, can walk into almost any major supermarket and see anything from your favorite scotch to Nutella to shampoo, you name it, in reusable packaging and you just pay a deposit when you buy the package and then when you're done, you drop it off in one of our bins, we give you your deposits back and then ah, we collect it, sort it, get it cleaned, the manufacturers refill it and back it goes on a shelf, sold to the next consumer. Sort of like the milkman Meeting, you know, a modern day in the supermarket across all products.

Speaker A: Yeah, fascinating. Well, I was going to ask you about those programs, actually, because it occurred to me that in the uk, probably listeners may well have come across the loop program in Tesco, which you trialed. So. And actually one of the brands that participated in that, um, I used to work for sipsmith. So you could go, you could go and you could refill your gin.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I'd like to ask you about, uh, that concept you've outlined very clearly, but the circular economy. I saw you talking and you said something which I wanted to ask you more about. So you said that the circular economy is all about money flow.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Tell us more about that.

Speaker B: This is the key, right? We view circularity like this idea that we should recycle or reuse as a public service, like a do good thing, you know? And as a result, we are sometimes, uh, misguided on how it works. In the end, circularity is, as you mentioned, only about money flow. And here's a very simple way to think about it. Imagine if I put an object in front of you and I wanted you to happily give that object another life. I think there's only two ways I can make that happen, right? One would be that the object itself has enough value that you're happy to take it. Imagine if I put a, uh, luxury watch in front of you and said, would you happily wear it and give it a new life? If it was valuable enough, I'm sure you'd say absolutely and be thrilled. Right? So either the object has to have enough intrinsic value. It would be similar to if you're walking on the street and you see, you know, a bar of gold or, you know, a hundred euro note or whatever it may be, then you'll happily pick it up and give it a new life.

Speaker A: Very happy. Yeah, Right.

Speaker B: Right. So, and now imagine if I put an object in front of you that was more like a dirty nappy or a broken $1 watch. Right there. The only way I believe I could get you to pick it up and happily give it a new life is if I paid you. And at some number your happiness gets there. Right? So that's the key part. Either for an object to be circular, either it has to have enough intrinsic value so that it naturally goes through the system and everyone's happy, or if the object doesn't have value, then you have to pay the system to do it. And the big white elephant in the room is that the biggest mega trend in object design across all objects is Cost reduction. Everything is cheaper tomorrow than it was today. Our clothing, our packaging, I mean everything. So if we are constantly removing value from objects as the biggest megatrend of object design, which is sort of an unfortunate one, but it is the case, then we need to fuel the circular economy with uh, economics. And that is the everything. Right. Whether it's recycling, honestly, or reuse.

Speaker A: Yeah. And what you've just said about everything is cheaper tomorrow than it is today. And I can see it with uh, the explosion of brands like Shane in fashion for example, and a, uh, constant kind of feels like a race to the bottom of the cheapest possible but desirable products and causing a huge problem. So I wanted to change tack slightly. Uh, not massively, but given today's political environment, do you feel like the movement that you are a part of towards circularity, towards waste reduction, reuse is taking a hit? Uh, is it a particularly challenging time given that political environment? Because it seems to me that these kind of arguments that people like you would make, that I would make our fellow B Corps would make, are uh, quite unpopular with certain wings of certain political parties or political thinking. And you think about that whole issue and does it kind of dampen your spirits for the future? Yeah.

Speaker B: So the direct answer is yes, there's a lot of headwind right now. And there's two forms of headwind. One is the political, but the other is economic, uh, headwind. So first on the economic right, sustainability is almost like a luxury investment for countries, organizations. That's why you see, sustainability is really the domain of developed and wealthy countries and isn't as much for people living in poverty. It is something we invest in then after we have taken care of all the other needs, you know, like basic infrastructure and safety and education and healthcare and all that stuff. So even where TerraCycle operates, uh, yes, we're in 20 countries, but they're all the big developed countries. Yes, yeah, yeah, the proverbial global north if you will. Right.

Speaker A: Those in poverty wouldn't necessarily be consciously investing in sustainability, but they might have the behaviors that are, ah, nonetheless, uh, more sustainable because they're doing the things that you were talking about right at the start. You know, less waste by design, by need. Right, yes.

Speaker B: Well it's interesting, right, so you're precisely correct. It could be forced. Right. You just live more humble lives, uh, reuse more and so on out of necessity. But here's the crazy part. If, if you're living in a village, you know, and it's incredibly poor, almost like pre economic systems, then there is no garbage, right. You're, you know, the packaging for your food is the peel of the banana or the apple or whatever. Right. But the moment that a little economics come in and you're now in an economic system, what happens is you're flooded with the cheapest single use packaging that exists. So for example in India people can access shampoo. It's not like pre shampoo but people can't afford buying a bottle of shampoo. Most shampoo is uh, sold in single serve sachets.

Speaker A: Yeah, the sachets. I remember hearing about this, these millions and millions of sachets.

Speaker B: Right. And ah, so imagine if you can only afford, you know, a squeeze of shampoo at time. Right now you are a consumer but the waste footprint is monstrously big. Right. And that's the challenge as we move the world into a consumer system. You get this massive wake of waste uh, behind you and overall there's economic constraint as we're living through right now. Right. Then uh, organizations will pull back on investing in sustainability, especially voluntary sustainability. The other side is what you said in your question on political is that right now the rhetoric in, in many countries is uh, sort of anti sustainability and that's challenging because it creates two negatives. One is regulations, both you know, uh, carrots and sticks, you know like carrots, uh, being subsidies and things that help companies like you know, look in the US like subsidies on electric vehicles or renewable energy, those go away which is very difficult. And then also the laws that may mandate such transitions go away. And then on top of that you rhetoric of people maybe not caring as much at the moment, um, you know, because of what's just being discussed in general. All those things are, are, are absolute headwinds. There's no question. What gives me optimism though is that the under sort of an uh, ironic optimism is the underlying reason we even care about these things, which is the state of our planet is only getting worse every day across every vector that exists. Whether you care about species diversity or waste or climate, you know, climate change, whatever, which means that what we're living through now is by definition temporary. It will reset because it has to, because the underlying stimulus is not solved.

Speaker A: Yes. So uh, at some point we will just have to do it.

Speaker B: Yeah, we just press fast forward on a bit more destruction faster. But we're going to see the console. It's sort of like an addict who's like yeah, I sort of feel like I should go to rehab, but I'm going to go party a bit more and then it's going to be like, when you wake up again, it's like, oh, my God, I really got to go now.

Speaker A: I'm being sent to rehab. Yeah, that's right. That's right, exactly. I have world control.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: TOM M. When someone asks you to sum up the incredible impact that TerraCycle has, or even a program that's not a TerraCycle program, but a, uh, circular economy program or recycling program reuse, is there, uh, a particular story or anecdote that you tell them to really bring that to life and how wonderful the world could be if we had mass adoption of this?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good question. I think. You know, what I have seen in my own eyes is if we do take advantage of composting at home and really using our council recycling programs, and then you layer on something like TerraCycle, there is no garbage being produced after the end of that. Like, at home, I do all those things, and I don't have a garbage pickup. I need to. And then if you go further to reuse, whether it's through us or anyone, you foundationally eliminate the entire idea of waste. And this, I think, is the profound point, is that we live in a world where we sort of feel like waste has been around forever, but it truly was only invented 75 years ago. Like, let's say 100 years ago. You know, not only did we darn our socks and cobble our shoes and all this stuff, but all our outputs, things that, like, were quote, unquote, waste, were things nature happily digested. You know, if the chair were sitting on broke, it would have been made from wood. We would have thrown it, you know, given it to the forest, would have been fine. Or our sweater was too tattered, would have been made from wool. Again, you could literally litter it, and the forest would have been fine. In the 50s, we invented, uh, complex materials like polymers and plastics and whatnot. But then we also really popularized consumerism. We buy today 10 times more stuff than someone alive 100 years ago across every category. And because it is so modern, uh, it is also, I believe, very solvable. Right. We just have to, you know, go to these underlying questions and, uh, maybe learn a little bit of our past. But if we adopt those points, the concept goes away. It's not something that's been with us, you know, for that big length of time.

Speaker A: I like that idea that it is only a dot in the last story of humanity. It barely even registers this length of time that this has been an. An issue.

Speaker B: Yeah, isn't that wild? Like, society didn't have this concept until this century, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely crazy. Yeah, yeah. I think that is a very easy trap to fall into to feel that, you know, this has been a slow build up over, ah, you know, the whole history of humanity. It was like. The reality is it's been a very fast buildup over a tiny, tiny well. It's a series of a couple of generations.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. It's just we forget, I think, you know, society forgets in like two generation jumps, you know.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. It's very easy. It's very easy to forget, isn't it? Sadly, we have to move on to the last section of our conversation today, which is Little bit radical world. Now, your work is so intertwined with positive change for the world, but I'm wondering if there is a little bit of a radical change for the world that you would like our listeners to get behind. What would that be and why?

Speaker B: So there's one simple one I would look at which is if we care about, you know, the state of our environment and truly whatever topic or topics is of interest, you know, maybe someone cares about the fact that half of our, uh, species diversity has disappeared in the past 50 years or is highly concerned about climate change or, you know, you pick the, you know, the topic or topics. These tend to be things that we feel very overwhelmed by. We feel that they're very complicated and that we certainly don't have any ability to impact them really easily. And this is what I would love people to open their eyes up onto, which is I, uh, believe the most fiercely democratic action we take, the action that changes the world. The most real time is not our political vote, it's how we shop. Because what we buy more appears tomorrow and what we don't buy less appears tomorrow. And that's like literally how it works. You know, companies constantly think about what do we want and put that in front of us and delete the things that we don't, uh, choose to vote for through our money. And I mention this because I think we do most of our shopping without that lens, uh, you know, open without realizing that. And so the change I would ask for is next time you shop, think about it this way. Whatever you buy, two is going to appear the next day. One certainly to replace the one you bought and one to signify the trend. And anything you didn't buy, one less will appear tomorrow because there's nothing to replace, but it's signifying a negative trend. And would you shop differently with that frame of mind?

Speaker A: I remember being acutely Aware of this the first time that I went vegetarian, then vegan, and now back to vegetarian. Listeners are familiar with my various stages of planting plant based. But I remember first of all going vegetarian and then just the, the scale of meat in the supermarket hitting me and realizing that I'd never really looked before, you know, and it's not just the meat aisle. It's like, okay, there's this, you know, cup of noodles that has chicken in, you know, dried up. And so yeah, I think uh, conscious shopping is a, uh, is a fantastic one.

Speaker B: What I would say too is because sometimes conscious shopping, I'm sure you felt this too in your journey, can feel like, oh my God, I have to be an expert on everything. And instead of something on my cart, I got to read the back of the label. Just simply think of it as do I want to vote for that product in general? And what's my knee jerk on that? You know, is it something that I'd love to see more of on the shelf?

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Do you have a favorite pet product that you have maybe switched to or you know that they are absolutely one of your best friend brands that you go to again and again?

Speaker B: That's a good question. Uh, not one that sort of like jumps to my mind. But I have to say I have the same journey as you. You know, 15 years ago I moved from, you know, eating everything to, I never went all the way to vegan. I've been vegetarian the whole time. I just love cheese too much.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel you, man. I've gone back. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So, you know, for me though, it's, what really tickles me is just the amazing uh, advancements that are out there in uh, plant based protein. I know, it's, it's, it's an interesting sort of industry to watch, you know, the impossible foods beyond meats because they went on such a roller coaster. But it is phenomenal on how great the products are and all the amazing innovation that's happening, you know, in, in the space. So I love, you know, those sort of products. And to me the, the, the, the, the thing is, is I, I like consuming. What I get the most excited about is when organizations, you know, and, and products really embrace this sort of shift and try to bring in circularity and ideally as radically as possible. You know, that's where reuse gets really fun when uh, you get to play with companies and they create the coolest ice cream package ever. Because now that ice cream package is an asset and it can go around and around or you know all sorts of other incredible innovations. To me, that is really exciting when you can smile and feel better about the new thing that just came out versus, oh, gosh, it's just another thing that's going to end up in the trash.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So the last question is always the same, Tom, and it is if there's someone listening today who has a little bit of a radical idea themselves, maybe for a business or an idea for their personal life, whatever it is, but they don't know where to get started, what advice would you give them?

Speaker B: Not to think too much and just to put the first brick down. Like, take the first step in building it and don't overthink it. I think many times brilliant, uh, ideas get lost in overanalyzing them. And the reality is you just have to start and put the first brick down. Then the world will tell you what was good and bad about it, and then you can keep adjusting and building. But it's a shame if you never even gave it that first step and it just always fluttered away.

Speaker A: As a concept, absolutely brilliant. Ideas don't age like a fine wine. They die on the vine. That's a, uh, quote from one of our previous guests. Oh, I love that. Comes back to me again and again and again.

Speaker B: Yes, that's. Oh, that's so smart. So the way to have it not die is you gotta plant it and nurture it and don't get too hung up on it being perfect out of the gate. It won't be. I mean, I started as a worm poop business, and today we're a global reuse and recycling company and have hardly any similarity with worm poop.

Speaker A: Uh, I didn't know that about Tara Cycle, and I think that is a genuinely incredible example of exactly what you're talking about, because you started somewhere and that was a viable business, but then you ended up somewhere completely different. But if you hadn't done the worm poop, you wouldn't be here today doing what you're doing now.

Speaker B: That's right. We wouldn't be timing right now.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Tom, thank you so much for, uh, spending your time with us today. It's really great to talk to you and, uh, hope to speak to you again soon. Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please follow us on your podcast platform. If you'd like to appear on A Little Bit Radical or have an idea of someone we should speak to, please email podcastandingongiants ah.com or get in touch with me on LinkedIn. You can search rob Faulks or search standing on giants and you'll find me there. Thank you very much and speak to you next time.