Tom Szaky founded TerraCycle in 2001, then a student at Princeton University, on a mission towards Eliminating the Idea of Waste®. From these humble beginnings TerraCycle has grown into the global leader in collecting and repurposing hard-to-recycle waste: operating in over 20 countries, engaging over 80 million people, and recycling billions of pieces of waste through various innovative platforms.

You can learn more about Tom and TerraCycle at TerraCycle’s page. I’ll copy the first and last parts of their history to illustrate the man, the company, and their growth.

2001: A freshman at Princeton University, 19-year-old Tom Szaky took several of his friends up to Montreal for fall break. There, he stayed with friends who were feeding kitchen scraps to red worms and using the resulting fertilizer to feed some of their indoor plants. The results were amazing and the idea for TerraCycle was born: to help eliminate the idea of waste by making quality fertilizer from food waste.

2002: Tom emptied his savings accounts, borrowed money from friends and family, and maxed out his credit cards to create a massive worm poop conversion unit. Most of Tom’s time was spent shoveling rotting food out of the back of Princeton University’s cafeterias. Broke, exhausted, and ready to throw in the towel, Tom met Suman Sinha, an angel investor who cut the young entrepreneur a check and became TerraCycle’s first investor. With the money invested by Suman, Tom was able to rent his first office space at 20 Nassau St. in Princeton, NJ.

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2016: TerraCycle started the year by forming a groundbreaking partnership with Suez, who purchased 30% of TerraCycle France, UK, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands and Finland. In the US, TerraCycle launched the world’s first-ever recycling program for industrial adhesive packaging with Henkel, as well as the first-ever recycling program for contact lenses and their packaging with Bausch + Lomb. A unique baby car seat recycling program was also nationally implemented in partnership with Target. Internationally, TerraCycle opened national operations in China, with offices in Shanghai.

2017: TerraCycle was named a winner of the United Nations Momentum for Change Lighthouse Activity award. The honor was in recognition of its initiative with Procter & Gamble and SUEZ to create the world’s first fully recyclable shampoo bottle made with plastic collected from beaches and waterways. TerraCycle was also the recipient of the 2017 Green/Sustainable Business Achievement Award given by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In England, TerraCycle and Right Guard unveiled an outdoor gym made with recycled aluminum canisters and in Australia, TerraCycle and L’Oreal awarded their first playground made from recycled beauty products. TerraCycle opened operations in South Korea.