Waste management isn’t the most glamorous field. But Tom Szaky, the founder of TerraCycle, a company that works with other companies and governments to recycle what has been typically un-recyclable, saw opportunity in it.

“There's such an opportunity to innovate around the topic of waste,” Tom says. “It has been a very uninnovative category because it is, quite literally, shitty, nasty and gross.”

One of Tom’s niches that he didn’t see other entrepreneurs chomping at the bit to fill? Diaper recycling.

When TerraCycle figured out how to recycle diapers — which make up a sizable chunk of non-biodegradable waste — a decade ago, it struggled with getting diaper companies on board. Companies knew it would be beneficial to the environment if their products were sustainable, but they often weren’t willing to shell out the money to make it happen.

TerraCycle turned that hesitancy into a marketing opportunity.

“Everyone would prefer not to buy diapers. But while your kids are in diapers, you might choose Brand A over Brand B,” Tom says on this episode of The Empowered Challenger. “So, if Brand A is doing what it can to be sustainable and incentivizing recycling, that gives them a leg up. We framed the entire approach to diaper recycling as something that can drive market share.”

TerraCycle’s challenge isn’t having to rise above its competitors: it’s getting people to care about sustainability, and brands to realize the potential market value of embracing the environmentally conscious future. In doing so, not only is the company challenging companies to rethink their marketing strategies around sustainability, but it’s changing the game of entrepreneurship entirely.

Featured Challenger

👨🏻 Name: Tom Szaky

⚙️ How he challenges: As founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Tom created a business model that incentivizes manufacturers, retailers and consumers to recycle products and packaging typically designated for the landfill.

♻️ Company: TerraCycle

💎 Noteworthy: Tom fled Hungary as a child and emigrated to Canada after the Chernobyl disaster brought radioactive clouds to his home country.

🔍 Where to find Tom: Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram

Challenger Wisdom

Highlights from the conversation appear below.

💡 New ideas require both time and effort to take root

“[It hasn’t been until] the past four years that I’m starting to really feel like the world is ready. But I’m also thankful that we had such a long time to figure it out, because we’ve really figured out how to be able to do our craft and leverage sustainability in a way that big companies are willing to hear out and lean into.”

💡 Passion comes easily with purpose

“Passion is the most important thing. It's much easier to be passionate about something that is purposeful, helping the planet or society, than about making money, which is vapid. And you can’t fake it. So it’s really important to find something that you are intrinsically very passionate about.”

💡 But you need more than passion to sustain a business

“TerraCycle now has 500 employees in our offices, and I'm sure they all have various degrees of passion. We now have to figure out our construct work even for someone who has no passion but can still contribute and make the business grow. It evolves over time, but it’s very important at the beginning.”

💡 The challenge of maintaining people’s attention, even without competitors

“We don’t really have competition. There’s a little bit here and there, but not any direct one-to-one competition. So what fuels us is people caring about the topic. If people shift and say, ‘No, now something else is going to be more important,’ that could be challenging, because we are not a product. We’re a platform that enables your purchase to have a better end-of-life.”

💡 Finding and filling a gap in the market

“We are good at supplementing what a local government or city does. It is important to recycle, but about half of what we put in the blue bins tends not to be recycled. So we’re going to focus on what you can’t put in that blue bin, or what you shouldn’t have put in the blue bin, and we work in that area, which is in addition to everyone doing as much local recycling as possible. It’s non-competitive, because we don’t go out and collect aluminum cans or newspapers or things that you should easily be able to put in your recycling bin.”

💡 Why critical feedback outweighs positive feedback

“[You should] really honor critical feedback because it's hard to give and it's filled with nuggets. Positive feedback is easy to give and never teaches you anything. If an entrepreneur comes to me for advice and I want to blow them off, I’ll just tell them it's a great idea and I probably can’t help you because it’s already awesome. But if I like it, I'll set up a meeting and rip it apart for a half-hour. ”

💡 Leveraging content as a foundation for good PR

“TerraCycle generates 40 unique articles every day. That’s a ton of media. We have a small army of publicists at this point, and we really focus on making journalists’ jobs as easy as possible. That’s when you start acquiring media assets. And that's true negative cost marketing. You get paid to market yourself.”

Top quotes from the episode:

Tom Szaky

Quote #1

“What fuels us is people caring. The most important thing for us is that people care about solving the idea of waste.”

Quote #2

“You don’t want to seek failure, but failure is going to come. The more innovative you are, the more you push the envelope, the more failure you’re going to see. So honor the learning, right? The real screw-up is if you repeat the same mistake twice.”

Quote #3

“The world is in a pretty bad position [environmentally], but nevertheless, I’m excited that people are really waking up to this topic, and that’s creating a lot of tailwinds all over the world. People’s eyes are opening and they tend not to close once they’ve opened. You can’t unsee it.”