When Tom Szaky decided to become an entrepreneur at the age of 19, he picked something that most people in that “dot-com” era would probably have called a very unattractive business: waste management. For the past 16 years, Szaky’s company, Trenton, N.J.-based TerraCycle, has specialized in recycling hard-to-recycle materials, such as cigarette butts and dirty diapers, and has remained a little-known name to the wider public outside of the recycling industry.

Like sustainability advocates everywhere, I was excited in January to learn that TerraCycle was working with two dozen of the world’s largest brands to launch Loop, a "circular economy" e-commerce website. Loop delivers products in reusable containers from brands that consumers already know and love. They magically appear on front doorsteps on an as-needed basis.

We also chose markets where we already have strong partnerships with brands and retailers. For example, TerraCycle has been operating in France for almost 10 years, and we had worked with Carrefour. Two years ago, Carrefour was the first retailer to believe in Loop’s model and to support the launch in Paris this year. It was fundamental for us to launch with Carrefour’s support – which is one of the leading retailers in France.

The containers, produced as part of recycling company TerraCycle’s Loop initiative, will at first only be available to customers shopping online. Loblaws will also pick them up and clean them once customers are done. While there’s no set date for the in-store launch, it’s expected to be later in 2020.

“Zero-waste” packaging may seem like an oxymoron, but that’s the vision of a new company working to create a sustainable ecosystem of goods for consumers and manufacturers. The New Jersey-based company, Loop, is leading the charge to create a world in which consumers buy products, but don’t have to throw away the packaging.

It’s the milkman for the 21st century, with customers from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia already having signed up online this spring. Founder and CEO Tom Szaky, who spun Loop off from his Trenton recycling company, TerraCycle, believes this is the right moment for a new way of grocery shopping.

Tom Szaky, the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, is known for recycling the unrecyclable—cigarette butts, chewing gum, diapers—but last year, as he watched the business model for recycling crater (in part because it’s not profitable to recycle many of the new, lighter, more flexible plastics), he had an epiphany.

It’s the milkman for the 21st century, with customers from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia already having signed up online this spring. Founder and CEO Tom Szaky, who spun Loop off from his Trenton recycling company, TerraCycle, believes this is the right moment for a new way of grocery shopping.

“About nine million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year,” explains Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, a global recycling company on a mission to eliminate waste. “Every year more people are producing more waste. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, by 2050 there will be more plastic by weight in our oceans than fish.”

The individuals that led this conversation included Lindsay Clinton, the Senior VP of Industry Initiatives at the NYCEDC, and Michael Waas, Global VP of Brand Partnerships for TerraCycle. According to both Clinton and Waas, in order for the circular economy to work, there must be a mind shift and behavioral change, and TerraCycle does this by having elementary schools partake in its programs because the passion that young people have is very impactful.