The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Szaky: Recycling is a band-aid; the only real solution is buying less
“Recycling is a band-aid, right? And it's better than landfilling and incineration. It's a step in the right direction. You know, reuse is an even better step than recycling. But in the end, the only answer is going to be a significant reduction of buying thing…”
Szaky: Loop's success would intentionally eliminate TerraCycle's primary recycling division
“And if Loop were to really succeed in a grand way, our first division, which is focused on recycling, would disappear.”
Szaky: Mission-driven founders should choose for-profit structure for easier capital access
“My advice to mission-driven entrepreneurs is typically to try to do this, that stuff in a for-profit context, because access to capital, Is way easier in a for-profit.”
Szaky: Switching from plastic to glass or aluminum is not inherently better
“No, I don't think so, because I think every material type has pros and cons. We're in a moment right now where we are I think rightly so, really projecting a lot of negative onto plastic because of microplastics, ocean plastic, all these things that are correc…”
Szaky: Packaging strategy must prioritize reuse over material choice
“The material choices we make, I think, need to be less about is it an alloy or glass or plastic. It's much more about how do we eliminate the need of packaging if we can. Then how do we shift to reusable packaging where the packaging is just cleaned and refill…”
Szaky: Making products from waste forces companies to cherry-pick garbage
“If we become a consumer product company, where our role is to make products from garbage, then the business hero of that equation is the product, which means we're going to have to find the very best inputs so that we can make the very best product.”
Szaky: TerraCycle Reinvests All Profits into Reuse Division Loop
“We've put all of our profits and investment into our third division, which is called Loop, and it's all about transitioning from disposability to reusability.”
Szaky: Reusable packaging generates more jobs and revenue than recycling
“The amount of jobs and the amount of revenue created on reuse is bigger than recycling, just like recycling is more jobs and revenue than landfilling.”
Szaky: Waste businesses can get paid for inputs due to negative demand
“And it turns out it's because there is, while there's massive supply, there's in fact negative demand. And so in this worm poop concept, the simple business model was, wait a minute, we can get paid for the input, because that's in a way the definition of garb…”
Szaky: Four retailers control the vast majority of the US fertilizer market
“And when I looked at the, at who controls the fertilizer market, it's only four retailers control the vast majority of it, which in the U.S. Is Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards, and Walmart.”
Szaky: TerraCycle used hair dryers on plywood to shrink bottle labels
“And since we couldn't afford a tunnel, like a heat tunnel to do this, we built this little rig where, imagine four hair dryers are placed on, like, this plywood pointing in a center direction, and if you dip the bottle into this hair dryer tunnel just right, i…”
Szaky: TerraCycle reached $6M in revenue selling worm poop fertilizer
“By then, so we had grown up to about six million in, in revenue on doing worm poop.”
Szaky: Virgin plastic is cheaper than recycled plastic, increasing annual usage
“Today, plastic is still cheaper to make new than to collect it and process it and then to use it as a recycled material, which is why we see the use of virgin plastic increase year over year over year.”
Szaky: TerraCycle Will Generate $75M to $80M in 2023 Revenue
“This year, you know, we'll do about 75 or eighty million in revenue, somewhere between those two numbers.”
Szaky: 20oz soda bottles share dimensions enabling mixed-brand packaging
“So the heights are the same, diameter is the same, the tread on the cap is the same. So you could do effectively mass production of mixed-use soda bottles, and that way the cases all look the same, everything was moving out, it worked nicely on the shelf”