Surely the best thing to ever come out of a fraternity kitchen experiment, Back to the Roots gourmet mushroom company was founded by 2009 UC Berkeley seniors Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora. After hearing something in a class lecture about using recycled coffee grounds to grow tasty mushrooms, the boys set to work. After producing a bucket of oyster mushrooms with the grounds they set off to the nearest Whole Foods, accosting a produce department worker and exclaiming, “Hey, look, we grew these mushrooms!”

Inspired? Think this sounds like something you could do? We’ll you’re right! The boys now work with Peet’s Coffee to score pounds of grounds and churn out Grow-Your-Own-Mushroom kits, which give all of us the chance to grow mushrooms in our own proverbial fraternity kitchens.

And what’s more, we can feel good doing it. In 2011, Back to the Roots diverted 1 million pounds of Peet’s coffee grounds from being treated as waste and going unrecycled. Their innovation can inspire us to think differently about the things we consider waste, and keep finding new (and tasty!) ways to recycle. Need some food for thought? The mushroom kits are $19.95 each, and can be purchased from their website.