TerraCycle's Tom Szaky comes to NW IL Nov 30th!

TerraCycle was founded in the fall of 2001 in a Princeton University dorm room—82 Blair Hall to be exact. The idea was simple: take waste, process it, and turn it into a useful product.

The 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 perservered. Towards the end of that summer, they found their first investor who learned of the company through an interview with Bernard Spigner. They shortly moved into their first office at 20 Nassau St, Unit 14.

Tom took an extended leave of absence from Princeton in the spring of 2003. In May of 2003, Tom entered the Carrot Capital business plan contest, which offered $1 million in seed capital to the winning team. And TerraCycle won! However, they turned down the money because they didn't like the direction in which Carrot Capital wanted to take the company.

The company continued, funded by prize money from business plan contests and angel investors. A major breakthrough was achieved in May of 2004 when The Home Depot began selling TerraCycle Plant Food™ on their website. In 2005, TerraCycle continued their growth as Whole Foods, Home Depot Canada, Wal*Mart Canada, Wild Oats and Do-It-Best began carrying the TerraCycle line.

Most recently, TerraCycle has been named one of the 100 most innovative companies by Red Herring magazine and been awarded the Environmental Stewardship Award from Home Depot Canada. The Environmental Stewardship Award is one of only two company-wide awards given by Home Depot Canada.