How to make millions off worm poop

The other day I wrote about recycling cans into art as a way to make money. Today I found another company called Terracycle that uses worms to process waste into useful potting materials. The company was started in 2001, when Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer met in their dorm room to create a business plan to win a contest in their college entrepreneurship club. Their eco-capitalism idea began with using waste from the dining hall and processing it in their “worm gin”. By the end of the summer, they had their first investor. Tom took a leave of absence from college in 2003. In May of that year he entered his business plan into another contest and won a million bucks to fund the company. However, they turned down this money because they wanted to take the business in another direction.

Tom and Jon in May 2004 had a major breakthrough when they began selling Terracycle through the Home Depot website. Now, Terracycle is found in Walmarts, Targets, Whole Foods, and other retail stores.

You can make money from their website and help save the environment as well. Terracycle is collecting waste for money. You can exchange cookie wrappers, drink pouches, wrappers, yogurt cups, bottles and corks for as much as 5 cents each.

Today, Terracycle has a line of recycled and natural organic products including bags made from recycled plastic bags, drink pouch totebags and backpacks and lunchboxes, cleaners, and of course their signature worm poop fertilizers.

An article in entrepreneur magazine asks now 26 year old Tom a life lesson he’s learned since starting the business. He responds: “think that there is nothing you can’t do if you’re willing to try and work hard. I mean, you’re going to fail, no question. But if you’re willing to learn from that and just work from that, pretty much everything is possible.”

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