The Waste Recycling Revolution
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“We hope to wake up one day and become the new version of recycling, where every waste stream has a solution within the TerraCycle system.”
It all started with worms. When fed organic waste, worm ‘tea’ is produced through their excrement. One man began to bottle this concoction into used soda bottles as a natural plant food, by taking food scraps from the disposal bin at Princeton Dining Services.
That man was Tom Szaky. By the next summer, Tom met his first investor, and TerraCycle was born. As sales of the natural plant food grew, Tom began looking for new ways to reuse. His company began to take the items that nobody else wanted, cigarette butts, toothbrushes, juice cartons, expired pills and food wrappers, and explore ways or reusing anything and everything that was available.
“‘We want to be the recycling solution for everything that’s not recyclable today,’ Tom says, ‘But we don’t have all the answers yet.