[00:00:00] Laure: We asked ourselves, before facing our waste crisis, how did we used to live? How did we used to consume products? And so we went back to this idea of the milkman, where at the time packaging was an asset for the companies. So it was in their interest to make these assets as durable as possible. Not because of the environment...because at the time in you know, late fifties, sixties, it was not yet an issue, but really because of economics. So the milk bottle had to be durable to be reused many, many times because it was simply an asset that would depreciate over time.

Clement: That's the voice of Laure Cucuron, the general manager for TerraCycle Europe.

She's talking about how TerraCycle looks to the past for inspiration for the future, modeling the e-commerce site Loop after your friendly neighborhood milkman. Loop brings the circular economy to your favorite brands through high quality [00:01:00] re-usable game-changing packaging. Imagine eating Haagen Dazs ice cream out of a durable container that is designed -- not only to combat single-use waste-- but to keep your ice cream cold for longer and allow you to get every last spoonful out of the pint.

You are listening to The Spaceship Podcast where we'll be speaking to entrepreneurs and global thought leaders to highlight the theories we cover in The Spaceship masterclass. If you are set on solving some of the world's biggest problems, check out thespaceship.org. Now let's give the mic to our guest.

Nice to meet you again, Laure and, um, would be nice if you can start by introducing what is TerraCycle that, uh, you have been working on for quite a long time, and describe what you do. And then we'll go and jump into, uh, the Loop and the different questions we have on the Loop concept.

Laure: Okay. Hi guys. So, [00:02:00] thank you so much for having me.

My name is Laure Cucuron. I'm the general manager of TerraCycle Europe and I'm based in London. And so what we do at TerraCycle and Loop, well we have a big mission. We say that we're in business to eliminate the idea of waste. So it's quite an ambitious one. So, uh, more concretely, what we do is that we develop and offer solutions on recycling and reuse mostly to FMCG companies that will enable them, and also enable us as consumers to move towards more sustainable consumption choice.

We've been operating since 2001. We originally were created in US by our CEO and founder, Tom Szaky, who was a student at the time. He developed our activities all across the world. Now we operate in 21 markets, uh, including 11 here in Europe and UK. And we have a lot of exciting projects [00:03:00] happening on the recycling side, but also on the reuse side.

Clement: Okay, thanks a lot for this quick introduction and yes, it's true.

It's a big mission. I'm curious to understand what was the key insight that made TerraCycle think of? "Wow. We need to create something like Loop."

Laure:  Yeah. So I think, so TerraCycle has been around for many years. And as I said, we started by understanding what were the challenges in the recycling industry. And I think at the time, we realized that there was very little innovation in the recycling world.

That's, you know, most of the recycling services were driven by costs. And, you know, we also looked into the economics of recycling and the fact that today, if some things are recyclable or not recyclable depending on the country where we operate, is not necessarily linked to the technicality of it. We think that we can recycle most product and packaging, but, [00:04:00] um, it's related to the economics of recycling, which means that, you know, the cost of collecting recycling, the waste is usually higher compared to the value of the recycled material that we obtain.

 So that's where we started to work on...