PAWcast: Tom Szaky ’05 on the World’s Overwhelming Waste Problem

Princeton Alumni Weekly Podcasts

Tom Szaky ’05 says everything we own eventually comes to the end of its lifespan, whether it’s a shirt you’ve worn for years or the cup from a coffee you bought this morning. Where does it all go? How much actually gets recycled? And with evidence mounting that all this waste is damaging our world, how can we throw on the brakes? Over the 20 years since he was a Princeton undergrad, Szaky has become an entrepreneur in the recycling world with his Trenton-based company TerraCycle, and a vocal advocate urging us to do better. He’s written multiple books, including Outsmart Waste, The Future of Packaging, and Make Garbage Great, and on the PAWcast he talked about whether we can get a grip on our out-of-control consumption — before the waste we produce consumes us.