79) Tackling our global waste crisis while accepting that people are selfish with TerraCycle's Tom Szaky

Instead of getting people to go against their will and desires to sacrifice things for sustainability, what if we just acknowledge that most of us are selfish, and learn to play into that? How did we even get to our global waste crisis today, and what do we need to do to address this issue on a national and global level?

 

Tom Szaky, the Founder and CEO of TerraCycle, an innovative company that's becoming a global leader in recycling waste that's traditionally difficult to recycle, shares his wisdom with us here.

 

HIGHLIGHTS 

[9:26] Tom explains why some items have been deemed "un-recyclable" and how TerraCycle manages to recycle them anyway.

[12:18] Tom: "Anything that isn't recyclable today, can be. The key is finding other points of value beyond just the material that makes up that object."

[15:40] Tom explains why we need to accept the fact that most consumers are selfish and how we can lean into that to create scalable sustainable solutions.

[17:30] Tom gives a few examples of how to convince consumers "on the positive."

[25:22] Kaméa: "What do you think allowed us to get to where we are today in terms of the scale of our waste issues?"

[27:35] What's better: recyclable plastic or biodegradable bio-plastic packaging?

 

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