Trash to Cash: Small green business turns profit with waste recovery
One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Given that the U.S. generates around 240 million tons of solid waste each year, and the EU generates 3 billion tons, there’s a lot of treasure ripe for the picking in the ecology of commerce. Dr. Dan Knapp, 71, is one man who’s reaping the riches of the Zero Waste philosophy. He founded Urban Ore, a waste recovery green business in Berkeley, California in 1980 with his wife Mary Lou Van Deventer. Last year the company did $2.7 million in sales.
Turning trash into cash was a natural evolution for Knapp. On a whim, as a college instructor in Springfield, Illinois in the early 1970’s, he purchased an old six-wheeled farm truck and helped students collect salvageable material lying about town.
“We were picking up anything,” says Knapp. “We went to a dump and I was appalled by what I saw.”
Then, Knapp recalls, he realized “There’s a green business opportunity here.”
That opportunity now stands on a three-acre lot in West Berkeley, diverts 8,000 tons of waste from landfills or incinerators each year, and supports 38 full-time employees.
The for-profit Urban Ore buys and sells almost anything under the sun, including building materials like doors and windows and more common thrift store items like clothes, furniture, tools, and lamps.
“Most of what we sell would have ended up in the landfill,” says Knapp. Three full-time employees recover two to six tons of material from the Berkeley transfer station each day—about 800 tons a year.
However, most of the ecopark’s items come from local residents who sell them for cash.
Right side of history
The U.S. and the EU each divert about 50 percent of their municipal solid waste, while the city of Berkeley, and Alameda County divert close to 70 percent. But Knapp is confident, as are many resource recovery experts, that a 90 percent waste diversion rate for any community is feasible.
This profitable green business that feeds off the discard supply, reduces waste, proves that there’s treasure in trash. As Knapp says, “We’re on the right side of history.”
Paul Hagey via Ecomagination
