TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

Give your plants the benefits of one of natures most potent natural fertilizers. TerraCycle Plant Foods are 100% liquefied worm castings—made by feeding millions of worms a balanced, all-organic diet. Completely odorless and ready-to-use, they can be applied weekly to any type of plant, indoors or out. Packaged in recycled soda bottles. Ready-to-use liquid formulas Gives stressed plants a boost Builds up pest resistance Adds beneficial microorganisms to the soil

Those who think they're pretty masterful recyclers have obviously never met Tom Szaky. (pronounced Zack-ee) He is the 27-year-old Hungarian-Canadian founder and CEO ofTerracycle, a company founded in 2001 that collects non-recyclable garbage and turns them into usable, branded merchandise like backpacks, boom boxes and laptop bags. Not only does it help the environment and charity -- over 1 million units of garbage have been collected and over $2 million have been donated -- but it also provides companies like Kraft and Colgate-Palmolive an eco-friendly solution to the tons of waste produced by their brands.

How to Create a Worm Bin So Your Flowers Stay Beautiful All Year Long: For those organic gardeners and divas who don't have the time, space or guts to build and maintain your own worm bin, products like TerraCycle Worm Poop can become your new best friend. It's all natural, eco-friendly plant food made from organic garbage.

Eco-innovator TerraCycle (www.terracycle.net) charted new territory in the consumer goods industry in 2003 with one big idea: How can you eliminate the idea of waste? Back then, the company specialized in worm poop fertilizer packaged in old soda bottles. Its "upcycling" concept soon caught the eyes of consumer good companies small and large, like Honest Tea, Kraft Foods and Clif Bar, who had their own garbage issues to solve.

  It's good for the environment and Planet Earth that creative minds continue to produce new and innovative ideas... and this company is on the cutting edge. TerraCycle, www.terracycle.net is responsible for diverting massive amounts of waste from landfills and incinerators, both of which produce carbon and greenhouse gases adding to pollution of air quality. By recycling this waste into new products... the need for new packaging is greatly reduced or eliminated entirely. Think about it... as TerraCycle says: " garbage doesn't exist in Nature."  If we consider "garbage" to be a combination of both organic and human-made materials... it is the latter which is the problem in modern-day cultures. An important distinction in the equation is the difference between "recycling" and "up-cycling."  For example... to "recycle" a waste product involves breaking it down and remaking the re-useable materials into a new product with different shape and form... whereas to "up-cycle" a waste product is to retain it's form and shape and re-use it for a different, useful purpose. Up-cycling therefore, can be described as: "using every aspect of waste as value."

  A common way to fertilize container gardens in general, and orchids in particular, is to follow the maxim “weakly, weekly.” This means to fertilize them at a weaker strength than recommended on the package, on a weekly basis. A good rule of thumb is 1/4 strength. A lot of orchid fertilizers are synthetic. If you want to keep things organic, one thing I’ve found that works pretty well for orchids is a weak worm tea. Check out a product called TerraCycle Orchid Plant Food if you don’t have your own vermicomposter or just don’t want to have to make it yourself.

Even the Ivy League isn't immune to dropouts. Tom Szaky -- a Canadian who didn't know that Princeton was in New Jersey until he got to campus -- left college after two years. Szaky was on fall break during freshman year in Montreal when he saw a bountiful weed (yes, that kind of weed) harvest that owed its success to worm and organic waste. The light bulb went off, and he began packaging worm waste in used soda bottles that later ended up on the shelves of Home Depot and Walmart. Over the next year, he would head home after class and work on his business, the way college basketball players head to the gym to work on their free throws. He didn't solicit help from professors and says the faculty was "hands-off" in that respect. By his sophomore year, TerraCycle was taking off -- he had a logo, a name and a diversified body of products -- and it was now or never. "I would have loved to stay in school, but TerraCycle was starting to grow and I was putting more time into it," says Szaky, 28, also a member of the AOL Small Business Board of Directors. "I took a semester off, which turned into a permanent leave." The business has evolved since 2003 -- kites made of Oreo wrappers and picture frames wrapped in bicycle chains, part of the company's "upcycling" line of products, helped catapult revenues to $7.5 million in 2009 -- but he still spends time on campus as a guest lecturer and thinks teaching could be a fun career down the road. For now, he's focused on waste, and he's able to indulge his inner dork with the science of composting. Looks like he didn't need that behavioral economics degree after all, much like other dropouts who felt the need to quit school and carpe diem. "I have nothing against school," says Szaky, author of Revolution in a Bottle. "TerraCycle was happening, and that was the decision at the moment."