What if the $2.6 trillion in materials the world throws away every year is not a waste problem, but a supply chain design problem? What if there was a way to capture that value and build a 9 figure empire?

In the Season 3 premiere, Sheri Hinish sits down with Tom Szaky, the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, a company operating in 20 countries that has recycled over 8 billion items the traditional waste system refused to touch. Tom dropped out of Princeton to build a business around garbage. Twenty-five years later, TerraCycle generates nearly $100 million in annual revenue and just announced a Reg A $75 million investment offering to scale its operations further.

In this episode, Tom breaks down why 95% of products have no viable recycling pathway (and why it has nothing to do with technology), why everything is getting less recyclable over time as products get cheaper, how Loop cracked the code on reusable packaging in France while it stalled in the US, and why waste is the least innovative industry in the world, making it the biggest blue ocean for entrepreneurs.

Sheri and Tom share insights on frameworks for circular supply chain design, extended producer responsibility, and the role of supply chain leaders as planetary systems architects. Whether you lead procurement, operations, logistics, or sustainability, this episode reframes waste as a competitive strategy conversation, not an environmental afterthought.

Connect with Tom Szaky and TerraCycle:

Terracycle.com + Tom on LinkedIn + Learn more invest.terracycle.com

Topics covered: circular economy, circular supply chain, waste economics, waste management, recycling, reuse, Loop, extended producer responsibility (EPR), packaging, zero waste, supply chain innovation, TerraCycle, regenerative supply chains.

What if the emissions hiding in your transportation network could cost your company millions in regulatory exposure — and you didn't even know?

In this final episode of the Supply Chain Revolution's 10 Big Ideas to Transform Supply Chains for a Regenerative Future, hosts Sheri Hinish (Supply Chain Queen) and co-host James George close the series with a conversation that ties it all together: end-to-end decarbonization powered by precision data.

Their guest is Constantine Komodromos, founder of VesselBot and a Time 100 Award honoree, who built his company after a visit to the Parthenon in Athens changed everything. What began as a maritime optimization platform evolved into a mission-critical data infrastructure company helping shippers understand — in real time — the emissions their carriers are generating, and what it's actually costing them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why spend-based emissions accounting creates dangerous blind spots for large organizations
• How one automotive customer discovered €300K to €1M+ in preventable cost exposure from 160,000 tons of emissions they didn't know they had
• Why 40% container utilization is a fixable problem that saves money and carbon simultaneously
• How real-time vessel data — including Suez Canal rerouting and fuel consumption shifts — gives shippers an edge in volatile geopolitical environments
• Why sustainability embedded into daily operations is more durable than compliance-driven initiatives

Sheri connects Big Idea 10 to themes across the series: James Mnyupe's case for CBAM as a business ROI lever (Big Idea 9) and Sophie Beckham's packaging taxation insights (Big Idea 7), reminding listeners that data literacy at every node of the value chain is what makes regenerative transformation real.

Ideas 1 through 6 asked us to envision what's possible. Ideas 7 through 10 showed us how to execute. This is the one that brings it home.

Nothing's stopping us now.

supplychainqueen.com

Episode Tags: supply chain, decarbonization, emissions data, maritime logistics, transportation sustainability, VesselBot, EU ETS, CBAM, regenerative supply chain, supply chain queen, circular economy, data-driven sustainability