Worm poop finds new life in spray bottle

Tom Szaky would be graduating from Princeton this year if he had not dropped out and started a million-dollar business -- that relies completely upon worm poop.

The 23-year-old wunderkind gave a presentation entitled "Young Entrepreneurship" and answered questions last night in Huntsman Hall.

While partying at a friend's house during his freshman year at Princeton, Szaky learned that organic waste fed to worms -- and later excreted -- creates a plant food that rivals that produced by the Ohio-based Scotts Miracle-Gro Company.

Like most college students, however, he couldn't afford to invest millions in a factory and advertising.

He solved this problem by raising $20,000 to buy a machine that converted organic waste into worm food and convinced Princeton's administration to let him use the waste from dining halls to fuel the machine.

Later, however, the Hungarian-born entrepreneur realized he had nothing with which he could package the product, so he and his friends went through the Princeton area digging through trash and picking out every average-sized soda bottle they could find.

At this point, he had an epiphany -- he could build the product completely out of garbage.

Now, his company provides the world's first consumer product of which every component is made from garbage. He expects to sell $2 million worth of his TerraCycle plant food this year.

Szaky built momentum for his company by presenting it in numerous business contests, winning seven such competitions in a row and earning $1 million in funding in the final contest.

However, sponsors also wanted to completely change his vision of the product into a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign.

"We refused it and walked away again with $500 in our bank account," believing that the product would be more marketable without a corporate image, he said.

Currently, the product has more shelf space in Canadian Wal-Marts than Miracle-Gro -- "the biggest company in the world that makes plant food," he added.

He also strongly advised students to consider the "paradigm of negative costs."

Since everything his product uses is garbage, it costs next to nothing to make, and he gets paid by large companies such as Pepsi and Windex to take their unused or wasted products off their hands.

He pointed out that while eco-friendly products usually cost more than the average product, his price is a constant "1 percent less" than Miracle-Gro's, due to the fact that TerraCycle is so cheap to produce.

"We've managed to build a product that by helping the environment is cheaper than making" it in factories, Szaky said.

He also stated his goal for the product -- "to prove you can build a real big business and become a major competitor to Miracle-Gro" -- at which point he might sell or go public.

Audience members were interested in his entrepreneurship, asking about summer internships, the time required to convert worm poop into the finished product and how he determines the price of his products.

"Obviously, his age and how he accomplished something so big is pretty amazing," College junior Christine Muller said, "and the fact that the whole product is garbage and has negative costs."

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