How Tom Szaky Turned a Dorm Room Worm Box Into a Global Recycling Business Across 20 Countries

The Inspired Stories Podcast · Sep 4, 2026 · 1h 9m

Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, was born in Hungary under the USSR, escaped as a political refugee with his parents at age four, found his first television in someone’s Toronto trash, fell in love with entrepreneurship the moment he arrived in North America, and dropped out of Princeton after convincing Walmart to put worm poop fertilizer packaged in used soda bottles on its national shelves — without having a factory. Twenty-five years later, TerraCycle operates in more than 20 countries, has recycled hundreds of billions of objects, runs France’s largest reuse system, and is in…