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垃圾大王汤姆·萨奇 Tom Szaky: A Garbage mogul


美式发音 适合泛听

  创业,一直是许多年青人梦寐以求的理想职业。而作为有个性、有特点的Y世代,即使是创业也要有自己的时代特色——要新、要潮、要环保!而这位以垃圾起家的新晋企业家就可以说是Y世代的职业楷模了。
  
  We're taking garbage and we're turning it into a useful product. The company started with worm poop, a 1)fertilizer that sold in over 10,000 major retailers. We literally could not afford packaging, so we started packaging in used soda bottles, and what that idea taught me was the power of a product made from waste.
  我们收集垃圾,并将其转化为有用的产品。这家公司以蚯蚓粪便起家,蚯蚓粪便是一种肥料,已经在超过一万家大型零售店售卖。我们根本负担不起包装费,于是我们开始用二手汽水瓶来包装。这个主意让我明白到用废物制造出来的产品有多棒。

  And if you can solve waste that way, you can really 2)eliminate the entire idea of garbage. And that's what we do. In the past six years we've saved over 50 million juice pouches, 10 million bottles, 10 million 3)energy bar wrappers: over a hundred tons of waste from going to the 4)landfill. And if we can keep coming up with solutions for waste, we can really, really change this world and make a lot of money at the same time.
  要是你能以那种方法处理废品,你就能真正消灭垃圾这个概念。那就是我们所做的。在过去六年里,我们节省了超过五千万个果汁袋、一千万个瓶子、一千万张能量棒包装纸——超过一百吨要送往垃圾堆填区的废品。要是我们能不断地想出解决废品的方法,我们真的真的可以改变这个世界,同时赚大钱。
 
  My name is Tom Szaky, and I'm a garbage 5)mogul.
  我叫汤姆·萨奇,我是个垃圾大王。
  
  Beginning 创业故事
  
  I came down from Canada to Princeton, you know, to go to school. And one of the challenges, being 20 in America, is you can't really drink. So my buddies and I…we went up, fall break, freshman year, went up to 6)Montreal to enjoy being able to drink at 20. Canada's also very relaxed with certain plants, and my buddies were growing these plants in their basement. By the time I got there, they were doing amazingly well. And it turned out that one of my friends was taking worm poop, and feeding worm poop to his plants, and that fixed the plants. And, what got me really inspired was the fact that he was taking garbage in his kitchen, and feeding it to worms, and that is what made this amazing fertilizer. And so making products out of waste is what really inspired me at that moment.
  那时我从加拿大来到(美国)普林斯顿上学。20岁的美国年轻人最大的难题就是不能想喝酒就喝酒。所以我和朋友们在大一的秋假,到蒙特利尔享受20岁可以尽情喝酒的乐趣。同时,加拿大对某些植物的种植限制也非常宽松,我的朋友们当时就在他们的地窖栽种这些植物。我到他们那儿的时候,他们已经干得非常好了。而我的一位朋友收集蚯蚓粪便来培育植物,那对植物有固定作用。让我很受启发的是他到厨房拿垃圾喂蚯蚓,这种不可思议的肥料就是这么炮制出来的。因此,用垃圾制造产品在那一刻最让我获得启发。
 
  And so within my...middle of my sophomore year, I dropped out of Princeton and I moved into a basement office, and started working full time on the company. And since we couldn't raise any money, you know, really 7)aggressively, we started entering and winning business plan contests. And that's how we financed our company. And the biggest turning point for 8)TerraCycle...really, where I think the company truly formed, was in April 2003. We had 500 dollars in our bank account, and we'd entered a contest for a million dollars. We went in and we won, but the venture capitalist that put up the money, wanted us to change the model...wanted us to move away from garbage, just launch another organic fertilizer. It was a big decision. And we ended up turning the money down and came home broke. Proud, but broke. And we went around to everyone's recycling container, and sorted out all the used soda bottles, and that point, became the world's first and only company to package, literally, and used in packaging, and we became, really, the most eco-friendly product that exists.
  在我上大二上到一半的时候,我从普林斯顿辍学,搬进一间地窖办公室,开始全职打理这家公司。因为我们筹集不到任何资金,我们开始非常积极地参加了并且赢得一些商业策划比赛。这就是我们公司的资金来源。对于TerraCycle,真正最大的转折点我想是在2003年4月,那是公司的理念真正形成的时候。我们的银行账户上有五百美元,而我们参加了一个可以赢取一百万美元的比赛。我们入围并胜出,但出钱的风险投资者想让我们改变模式……想我们从垃圾的概念转移到推出另一种有机肥料上。那是个重大的决定。我们最后放弃了这笔资金,破产而回。骄傲着却破产了。于是,我们翻遍各家各户的垃圾桶,找出所有用过的汽水瓶。那时,我们成了世界上第一家而且是唯一一家真正循环使用包装的公司,我们也真正制造出世上最环保的产品。

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