The reality show Garbage Moguls follows the employees of TerraCycle, an up-cycling start-up company. During each episode, the employees will try to create a new product out of material that cannot be recycled and sell the end product to large companies.

• Tom
• James
• Dara
• Leah
• Chris
• DeanOfficial Site: Garbage Moguls Cast
• Tiffany
• Milton
• Dr. Bill
• Daniel
• Kevin
• WendyOfficial Site: More Moguls

At age 26, Tom Szaky founded TerraCycle in 2001 after he developed a fertilizer made with worms out of organic waste that greatly improved growth of marijuana plant. From there, he realized he could make products out of many items that could not be recycled. As of 2009, TerraCycle makes 50 products and has a goal of adding one new product a week.CNN.com: Garbage Mogul Makes Millions From Trash (March 25, 2009)

There are two other companies, Preserve and Ecoist that are also in the up-cycling business.

William McDonough and Michael Braungart began the up-cycling craze in their book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. They pointed out how many different things in nature had their own life cycle and contributed to the environment, instead of taking away from it, then inspired readers to think of ways they could up-cycle things that could not typically be recycled.