TRENTON, N.J., Dec. 15, 2004
Turning 'Poop' Into Gold
Jim Axelrod Reports On Man Who's Turning Worm Waste Into Wealth
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Tom Szaky, left, quit Princeton to develop his worm poop dream. He shows Jim Axelrod the conveyer belts that collect the waste. (CBS)
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A conveyer belt turns and collects the worm waste to be turned into fertilizer. (CBS)
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He's says he has more than 1 million worms. As CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod reports, they're kept in a contraption, which allows him to collect their "worm poop."
Skazy, a 22-year-old Canadian, is building a business in New Jersey by turning the half-ton of worm waste a week into 6,000 bottles of fertilizer. The trade secret is what he feeds his worms and the product is proving to be remarkably effective.
It seems so simple. So why hasn't anyone thought of this?
"Maybe no one has thought of making a product from garbage yet," says Skazy.
Every part of his product is recycled. The bottles are sent from school cafeterias. The sprayers are other companies' extras. The boxes are misprinted mistakes, all recycled.
Skazy is turning garbage into gold and brown into two kinds of green: green chemistry, which is a buzzword in agriculture these days for organic fertilizers that are environmentally friendly. And then you have the other kind of green - the kind of green that comes from closing deals with Wal-Mart and Home Depot, which he just did.
He calls himself a businessman, rather than a scientist.
"It's all business," he says.
It's a classic case of risk and reward. Skazy's risk occurred when he and his partner took a turn off a pretty fast track to go for it.
"The real trick was just dropping out of school and building it in a really big way and that's just what we did," he says.
But they weren't just dropping out of any school.
"No, we were dropping out of Princeton," says Skazy.
Imagine your son telling you he was quitting Princeton to corner the market on worm poop.
"It's just something where you can make a lot of money in the process but smile while you're doing it cause you're doing a good thing all the way around," he says.
Skazy's story is a reminder about following your dreams. The pot of gold may require dealing with a ton of crap.
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