The concept of TerraCycle came up when my friends and I were trying to figure out how to grow "better tomatoes" in our basement and figured out that worm poop did the trick. The fascinating thing for me was that the worm poop itself was made from waste, a commodity that people are willing to pay you to take. Within six months of that serendipitous moment during my fall break (freshman year at Princeton) I left school to corner the market on worm poop. Inc. magazine wrote about us in 2002, giving our business plan a rating of 4 out 10. Little did anyone know that three years later we would be on the cover as The Coolest Little Startup in America.

Tom Szaky's plant food can be found on the shelves of retailers nationwide. So how did this 25-year-old tame Wal-Mart and Home Depot?

Tom Szaky is the 26 year old Founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Inc. the world’s first company that manufactures and packages products from garbage! Tom left Princeton University during his Sophomore year to follow his dream of founding a truly eco-capitalist company. After an inauspicious start in a friend’s garage with no investors, TerraCycle and Tom have become an environmental thought leader pushing sustainable products and practices through mainstream outlets.