Garbage Maven: Tom Szaky

Although he was no environmentalist growing up in Toronto, Tom Szaky is at 23 the energetic ceo of TerraCycle, a company that makes salable products from other firms’ waste. At TerraCycle’s headquarters in Trenton, New Jersey, the furniture and computers were other companies’ rejects, bound for the landfill. But they’re good enough for Szaky. His urge to conserve isn’t romantically inspired; it just makes sense, he says, to use free stuff. TerraCycle’s whole business model is unusual: its products are made from and even packaged in converted waste. The liquid-spray plant food the company produces from worm castings is judged by some as more effective than chemical fertilizers and is carried by stores across Canada, including Wal-Mart and Home Depot. TerraCycle, which expects sales of $1.5 million to $2 million this year, hopes to expand in 2006 by broadly tapping the U.S. market.

Not bad, considering that just four years ago Szaky was a first-year economics student at Princeton. His breakthrough came when he dragged some college friends on a trip to Montreal. There he stumbled on a homegrown worm composter that inspired what would become TerraCycle’s first product. Szaky and friends returned to New Jersey, drew up a business plan and built a prototype. They maxed out their parents’ credit cards producing it, as Szaky slept on friends’ dorm-room floors.

He already had some business experience. At 14, Szaky started a Web-design firm whose clients included Roots clothing. With TerraCycle, his lack of funding forced him to be creative: the firm packages plant food in old pop bottles, picked up from recycling depots or donated by kids. The spray nozzles are leftovers from other firms.

Szaky recognizes that his young age may have hindered TerraCycle’s early development. But now that he has survived the start-up, Szaky sees youth as an advantage. Employees aren’t intimidated talking to him, and there’s a willingness at the firm to innovate. “Not every crazy idea is going to work,” he says. But generating new ideas is what he loves. -By Laura Blue

The “Future” Fund: Andrée-Lise Méthot

Sustainable development could be something as simple as a cranberry, says Andrée-Lise Méthot. But more on that later. Méthot is president and ceo of the Fonds d’Investissement en Développement Durable (fidd), the C$18 million green venture-capital fund she set up in 2003. She channels her investments into activities that, as she puts it, won’t compromise the capacity of future generations to meet their needs. At the rate we now consume, Méthot says, Earth will no longer be able meet our needs by 2050. “We will need two planets,” she says.

Méthot’s interest in sustainable development grew out of her management of the C$45 million Quebec fund. She figured she could achieve better returns by creating a more focused green fund. (The Quebec fund is now fidd’s chief backer.) Méthot, who has an engineering degree from Université Laval and a master’s in primitive ecosystems from Université de Montréal, is open to new investors and possibly expanding fidd’s horizons beyond Quebec.

Each day, weather permitting, Méthot, 37, rides her bicycle to work from her home in Montreal’s Petite-Patrie quarter. She has a staff of four, with expertise in finance, science and the environment. Her goal is to achieve a 15% return for her investors—the Quebec fund, the Quebec Federation of Labour Solidarity Fund and Fondaction—and so far she says she’s on target. Méthot and her team also put budding companies that seek investment through “life-cycle assessments” to determine ways to make their operations more green—and more profitable.

That’s where the cranberry comes in. Bioetik Inc., based in Rouyn-Noranda in Quebec’s Abitibi region, makes Equibar organic energy bars without chemicals, trans fats, cholesterol, eggs or dairy products. After an assessment, the fidd recommended that Bioetik use Quebec-grown cranberries in the energy bars. “Less carbon,” says Méthot, explaining that trucking homegrown cranberries to Abitibi consumes less fuel than bringing in fruits from California. “We look at the whole picture.” —By Kevin Dougherty

This Is Good Grass: Roger Samson