The compost is certified through the US Composting Council’s Seal of Testing Assurance (STA) program. “Instead of having investments tied up with huge equipment at all sites, we move the grinders, which are mobile, as needed to different sites in the area.”Ībout 2.5 million cubic yards of compost and mulch are produced and sold annually. “We have one tub grinder and like the productivity and texture of the ground material, but given our proximity to the surrounding community, we limit its use due to the potential of projectiles,” explains Rose. The company has eight grinders (including Peterson, Vermeer and Diamond Z brands), seven of which are horizontal. The company has 8 grinders, 7 of which are horizontal (a Peterson grinder shown). Roughly midway through the 4-month (on average) composting process, material is ground again and goes into a curing phase. A loader operator combines the food waste with yard trimmings and stable bedding, and pushes it into an initial pile material from the pile is fed into a grinder, and then put into a static pile for composting. As it is tipped, a worker inspects loads and removes the occasional trash bag or other contaminant. The preconsumer vegetative food waste consists primarily of off-cuts from companies that process fresh produce. We have always been strong at marketing, and making sure we evolved in a manner where we had a home for everything we made first before expanding.” “The rest is product sales,” he adds, “which is why we need to keep things clean. He estimates that tipping fees at Living Earth’s processing sites account for about 11 percent of the company’s total revenue. “We would be looking at fees of over $40/ton, and that just isn’t realistic in this solid waste market.” “It costs about $25 a ton to landfill waste in this region, which is too low to be able to take in more contaminated material that requires higher processing costs,” explains Rose. Another limiting factor is low landfill tipping fees, which makes it difficult to set higher gate fees for source separated organics that may have higher levels of contamination. With processing facilities located in the cities it services, Living Earth limits itself to accepting feedstocks that are not extremely odorous. Rose joined with other Living Earth managers and an investment group to purchase the company, which today has 210 employees. In 2007, when Republic Services was preparing to merge with Allied Waste, Republic determined that Living Earth was a “noncore company” and decided to sell it. Our strategy was to develop conveniently located ‘in-field’ facilities that are in the city and accessible to our landscape customer base and various solid waste haulers, as well as our retail yard customers.” Overtime, we had a mission to grow the company’s organics recycling infrastructure in the region. “Composting sites were opened at three landfills - one in Houston and two in Dallas-Forth Worth. “I then worked for Republic for 17 years,” he says. In 1990, Republic Services - then a “little, little” company, notes Rose - purchased four companies in Texas, including Living Earth. Rose was one of the owners of the original company. Living Earth opened its first organics recycling facility in 1985. In addition, the company has contracts with several municipalities to process curbside-collected brush and yard trimmings. All Living Earth recycling facilities are open to the public and commercial businesses such as landscapers. Brush and tree trimmings are processed separately into mulch. It composts the yard trimmings, manure and food scraps in large static piles. Worth region and Houston, and 3 stand-alone retail yards.Īll together, Living Earth processes over 700,000 tons/year of yard trimmings, brush, preconsumer vegetative food discards, untreated wood wastes, stable bedding and herbivore manure. “I’ve been in this business ever since,” he notes, “including managing the company where I worked as a kid.” Today, Rose is President and CEO of The LETCO Group LLC, which does business as Living Earth™, a Dallas-based composting and mulch production company with 18 processing facilities that include retail yards located in the Dallas-Ft. Mark Rose’s “career” in organics recycling started at age 13 when he had a job attaching empty bags to a bagging machine at a soil products company in Austin, Texas. Feedstocks at Living Earth’s composting and mulch facilities include yard trimmings (inset) and preconsumer vegetative produce trimmings.
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