This is A Sustainable Mind, episode 27.

If you're an individual listening and thinking, how can I contribute the most to a more

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Welcome to A Sustainable Mind, where we delve into the minds behind today's most impactful environmental campaigns, organizations, and startups, inspiring the environmental change makers of tomorrow.

I'm your host, Marjorie Alexander.

Thank you. Today we'll be talking to Tom Zaki, founder and CEO of TerraCy, a company that is not only revolutionizing the way that we recycle, but is also taking on the challenge of finding a solution for just about every form of waste.

Tom, welcome to the show.

So Tom, thank you so much for letting me interview you on A Sustainable Mind.

TerraCycle is a company that I've been familiar with for years, but I am so surprised every day when I'm out talking to people and I mention your company and a lot of people actually don't know that you guys exist. So before we get too deep into things, I'd love to know the role that environmental sustainability played in your childhood, but also how that

brought you to founding the organization. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So,

you know, my story begins in Hungary. I was born in Budapest in 1982. Still at the time, it was

communist under the Iron Curtain. We left in 1986 when Chernobyl happened.

So it was an environmental disaster, a really big one, the nuclear meltdown, that collapsed

the borders for a few days.

And my parents were able to leave with me.

I was four at the time.

My entire journey in life really began with a pretty major environmental disaster.

And then from there, we hopped around Europe, effectively trying to gain refugee status

somewhere and ended up in Canada, lived there for about 15 years in that.

Canada has a real strong culture of environment.

It's built into the DNA of people.

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