TerraCycle History

TerraCycle was founded in the fall of 2001 in a Princeton University dorm room. The idea was simple: take waste, process it, and turn it into a useful product.

TerraCycle's initial business plan was written for a business plan contest sponsored by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club. The following summer, Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer made arrangements with Princeton Dining Services to accept dining hall waste and process it in their prototype 'Worm Gin'. The waste turned out to be a bit messier than they had anticipated, but they persevered. Towards the end of that summer, they found their first investor. They shortly moved into their first office at 20 Nassau St, Unit 14.

Today, TerraCycle is the only company in existence whose product (except for the product label) is built entirely from waste. That is, TerraCycle takes worm poop, brews it into an all-natural plant fertilizing "tea" and then packages it and sells it in used soda bottles to stores such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Target and CVS. Since its debut in 2004, the company has emerged as a model of eco-capitalism and has grown between 300 and 600 percent annually, with projected sales reaching the $100 million mark in the next decade.

TerraCycle products currently on the market are: