From Combat To Compost (Veteran Compost with President Justen Garrity)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justengarrity/
https://www.veterancompost.com/

How did Justen go from combat to compost? 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is my friend, Justin Garrity, the president of Veteran Compost. How are you, Justin? Good. How about you? Really good. Thank you for making some time for this. This is a unique topic. we haven't discussed on sustainable packaging very much, because frankly, compostable packaging has been a little bit of a challenge. but I'm really excited to learn about what you do with, the compostable packaging materials. And, we'll get into all those details, but let's start first with your background. I know you're a veteran I want to thank you for your service

Justen Garrity: 1:08

No, thanks for paying your tax dollars right in my pocket for a couple years there. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 1:13

Well deserved. Yeah.

Justen Garrity: 1:15

yeah, no, I did, 10 years in the army after college. So I think if you went back to my high school, I'd probably be voted least likely to join the army. but I did 10 years as a combat engineer officer. so five on active duty, five in the national guard and, it's fun when you're younger and, but it's a. A livelihood that, you cash out the house chips when you have them. So I still had all my fingers and toes after. 15 months in Iraq on my last, overseas tour. And I decided to cash out and go to the national guard, which is easy living,

Cory Connors: 1:45

Well, we appreciate what you did for us as a community and as a, United States of America, I should say, but let's talk about, veteran compost. What is it? How did you start it? And, how does it work?

Justen Garrity: 1:58

All good questions. Yeah. So I got home, from active duty, switched to the national guard, bad timing, in 2009, because there was the downturn in the economy. And so I walked right into a terrible job market. And so six months after being in Mosul looking for bombs, I'm at home looking for a job and I couldn't find one. And so I liked the idea of sustainability. But I wanted something that was financially sustainable. And so as I looked around, I guess it was drawn to like the waste sector. And I looked at electronics recycling, that's maybe 3 percent or less of the waste stream. And there's some ethical and financial challenges there. And I looked at just general kind of scrap metal and things like that. You just look at the pie chart of waste and you look at organics, it was compelling that there, here's the biggest majority of what's going to the landfill is food waste, yard waste, untreated wood waste, and paper waste. And a lot of that paper waste, the short fiber and stuff like that is, is, a good compost feed stock. And so saw all this material and no one was really doing it and thought, let's have a go. And, I had a backup plan of going to Afghanistan, working for, a job. And, I was motivated for it to work cause I didn't really want to plan B wasn't optimal, man. So I got

Cory Connors: 3:17

started

Justen Garrity: 3:19

with the money in my pocket, that I'd saved when I was away. And, this is literally the story of a guy in a shovel. And here we are, 14 years later, we have two facilities. 30 full time employees and looking to grow that this year to, probably see some good growth the next couple of years with the growth of the compost industry in general.

Cory Connors: 3:39

Yeah, And that's a great thing to talk about is how's it going? how is the trend going? So you're seeing growth, you're seeing more demand for your services.

Justen Garrity: 3:49

It's an interesting space that compost business because we have two things that we're dealing with, and I guess we probably could share drinks with, probably people in the, cardboard business or something like that, where you're taking this waste stream that we're handling with. for our in the case of our facility, we do primarily food scraps and compostable packaging along with wood chips or arbor chips. The things in 3 trucks. And there's composters to take manure or yard waste and other materials. And on 1 side of our business, we're a waste. Business where we're bringing that in, and it's really our feedstock and then on the other side is the product sales and so. it's changed a lot. when I started in 2010 and I went around to restaurants or businesses and said, I'd love to talk about your food waste. Everyone thought I was with a food rescue. this idea of composting, really wasn't there yet. And I think now it's, we go to talk to people. Or they call us and they're ready to go. Hey, I have my last job. we had this and I got here and I want to have it. Or, hey, system wide at our health care network. We're rolling this out. And now it's I think more mainstream, at least in sustainability circles, right? I think if you went up to anybody who had sustainability in their signature block, they understand. Conceptually composting where it wasn't that way, 10, 15 years ago.

Cory Connors: 5:04

Yes. agreed. People are coming around to sustainability as a real thing to talk about and, to move forward with. I remember when we used to call it, environmentally friendly or green. And, yeah. And people didn't really take it seriously except for, certain areas like where I live in Portland, Oregon. it's always been embraced and, recycling and composting here is, normal. And I remember traveling as a kid to California and they didn't at the time recycle cans. I thought, what? You throw those away. You're crazy. so that was a culture shock for me, but I'm excited to see composting, food scraps and, Compostable packaging and, like you mentioned, wood chips, where I live, we have lots of, trucks driving around, trimming trees and, that's a big source of waste, whereas it could be valuable stock, would you say most of what you do is the food scraps or is it the wood chips or. Packaging

Justen Garrity: 6:01

the majority is food waste in terms of by tonnage. so if you think about a, bucket of wood chips or mulch, that's a lot fluffier than a whole bucket of food waste. And so there's a lot of moisture and things in that. But, ironically, or I guess, In terms of the process, the thing that generates the most finished compost is that wood chip because there's more material there. So a tomato, if I took in a truckload of tomatoes, 97, 99 percent of that truck is water weight. And so we need the two together, for a number of reasons mixed together. And In our ratio, it's about 2 to 1, 3 to 1 wood chips mixed with food scraps. and then packaging has become a bigger and bigger, portion of that waste stream as we see, we have a residential collection program in the D. C. metro area. And so everyone is getting takeout containers and packaging and things like that in the residential streams. So we see more of that from our residential customers. And then on the commercial side, as we do corporate lunchrooms, special events, festivals, weddings, we see more and more of the single use, compostables becoming a thing as people try to, get away from, disposable single use conventional plastics.

Cory Connors: 7:07

It fills a major hole in the circular economy, in my opinion. And what you're doing is very commendable because a lot of the materials that we're trying to recycle are not recyclable because they're contaminated by food and, or other things. and so what you're doing is taking a product that would probably end up in landfill and Essentially giving it another life and keeping it in the cycle. is that kind of how you feel every day? Like you're saving things from the landfill.

Justen Garrity: 7:40

Exactly. Right. So every, and we try to sell that to our staff, cause it's not, as we. Take this, it's a hundred plus degrees here with the heat index and other days in the mid dead of winter, it's zero degrees at our facility. And so how do you motivate people is, Hey, the bigger picture and every truckload that comes to us, is a win, right? And every bin that we collect is a win. and so that's we try to keep the bigger picture in mind because it softens the blow of the nature of the work,

Cory Connors: 8:06

The last stat I heard was that every American every day produces about four and a half pounds of food waste. is that kind of the numbers that you've heard?

Justen Garrity: 8:17

There's all kinds of numbers. I think there's one that's I think it's like 1200 or 1500 calories a day that we waste. it's and there's other movements afoot in the food space about how do we better. Allocate food and intercept food to food rescue or donation and things like that. Cause obviously, if you look at the food waste hierarchy that the EPA puts out composting, Hey, we're better than the landfill, but if you could feed animals or people that would be even better. and so we do see that, but there's always going to be some amount of material that's just inedible or can't get to, to other humans. And we work with like grocery chains and folks like that, that do donate, but there's still a ton of material That needs a home other than the landfill.

Cory Connors: 8:58

And I think, which is awesome. And I think what you mentioned on the packaging today, a podcast with Adam and Evelio was some of what you do is taking packaged food and breaking it down into its components of food and packaging, is that a big part of your job We see that

Justen Garrity: 9:18

space. Yeah, that space is growing a lot. I think, whether it's just people wanting assured destruction, cause we have Hey, if you want us to tape it and give you the ladder of the destruction, we can do that for brands that want to make sure that their product doesn't end up somewhere. It doesn't. Fall off the truck and end up somewhere. It's not supposed to. so there's some aspect of that, but then the sustainable part of that, we do manual depackaging. And so that does limit some of the materials we can take just based on what our staff can handle and the cost versus like a depackaging machine. I think the challenge if you look up Food depackaging machines is they're pretty expensive, but the greater issue is the microplastics. And so the way that they shred or exclude the food waste, there's some concerns about microplastics ending up in that food waste slurry. And so that's the only reason we haven't gone to a machinery based approaches is that microplastic concern.

Cory Connors: 10:16

That's a really important point. I think we need to keep these materials separate and keep the food scraps in the compost bin and the packaging material that isn't compostable, divert it back into recycling or, possibly reuse or all kinds of different ways. But yeah, it sounds like a very necessary part of, the circular economy. Well done. I think our

Justen Garrity: 10:38

big challenge is that we're on the other side of this trying to produce a product that people want to buy. And so that's the thing is, that we struggle with is sometimes the best thing for disposal is not always the best thing for the finished product. And so that's our challenge is making sure that finished product is available.

Cory Connors: 10:54

That's it. It has to have value. we talk about this a lot in recycling is it, if the end product isn't valuable, is it really recyclable? it's technically recyclable. we've mentioned this many times on the show with, I've interviewed several recyclers and they say, well, if it's not, a value, it, maybe it shouldn't be, Used in this circular economy, and that's a really good point. So I, I think we're going to see a lot of changes coming in the future. Are you seeing, changes with extended producer responsibility laws? are you seeing any changes yet? Are you hopeful that they will change things for the better?

Justen Garrity: 11:34

Yeah, it's just something we had brought up, and we talked on packaging today, because I think that's the drumbeat for me, because I wear 2 hats, not only as a composter, but, in January this year, I joined the board of BPI, certifies a lot of compostable items. And I joined as the kind of composter representative on the board of directors. And 1 of the things that we struggle with is that. being compensated for the composting of these materials, and I think, I'm hopeful that EPR is going to help bridge that gap in terms of, compensating people that are handling the recycling or composting of materials, which is great for recyclers and composters. And then also just like we saw with Colorado with this new kind of NARC hotline they have

Cory Connors: 12:15

and places

Justen Garrity: 12:15

like Washington and other states with the labeling, Colorado as well. I think it's going to help to clean up and simplify things, I hope. So let's talk about

Cory Connors: 12:25

that before we move on. Let's talk about that. What is that NARC hotline? What does that mean?

Justen Garrity: 12:31

Colorado has a, an anonymous contact form where you can reach out and say, Hey, I'd There's this thing, it's made out of polypropylene, and it says it's compostable.

Cory Connors: 12:40

Oh, I hadn't heard about

Justen Garrity: 12:42

that. So yeah, if you're selling things that are, of questionable labeling, there's a new kind of citizen reporting thing, and so I'll be curious to see how that plays out over the next couple months, and what kind of, Um, what are their consequences? Do they really follow up? What do they do in regards to that? because, where I'm at in Maryland, they're just in the beginning stages of exploring EPR. And so I think there's a lot of states that are, inching closer and watching what's happening elsewhere. And then maybe we figure out what the right framework is. And then at some point, there's a tipping point, right? like you talked about with composting on the West Coast became such a big thing on the West Coast. It just. Came east before, and now it's a thing everywhere in the country, or at least a known thing, and I think with packaging, at some point, if, brands and packaging, if you have to do all these things to meet requirements in certain states, you're just going to make it your national packaging, right? You're probably not just going to have a Colorado package or a Washington State package, you're just going to make a wholesale change, I

Cory Connors: 13:42

would think. Oh, well said. I agree. Totally. People are looking for what is the most extreme. Law, what's, California's truth and labeling act or Washington's EPR law, which 1 is the most extreme and, will our packaging, survive that well, is it allowable under that, new rule or law? I think you're exactly right. People are going companies, our customers at Orora packaging are looking at those laws and saying, we don't want to have different packaging for different States. We just want to have. This kind of packaging for retail and this kind of packaging for direct to consumer. So that's an incredible point. Very well said. Yeah. do you think, and this is a big question, do you think that through recycling and composting we could ever eliminate the need for landfills?

Justen Garrity: 14:36

That's a good question. I think, I'll be honest, I haven't even thought that far. I think a stat that I had seen a couple years ago was that. And we've talked about this with the customers that we compost with is, between recycling kind of existing recycling infrastructure and composting. I think a lot of places could get to 80 or 85. Diversion, and then there's that 15 percent of, like. those hard to recycle items or just bathroom waste or gross things that we have to solve, but if we could get everybody that 85%, I'd be set to retire. So I guess I haven't thought about a hundred percent. And then you get into the zero landfill, zero waste thing. I, that's a whole nother crew with, and then there's people who have followed different definitions of what that is, or worse. So I think if we could just get. The people recycling and composting, and then I guess take a knee, drink some water and reassess, I'd be happy with that.

Cory Connors: 15:32

I agree that 85 percent or 80 percent or even 50%, would be a huge, number, to be able to tout. And, I, I think it's possible. I'm very optimistic. I think we were doing things now that will make it so things are very, Much are much more recyclable are much more compostable are much more easy to identify for people like you and your team. so I, I have a grand visions of the future.

Justen Garrity: 16:02

Okay. I'm on board. I like it.

Cory Connors: 16:04

So let's join forces and make this happen. We'll keep sending people your way.

Justen Garrity: 16:10

Yeah.

Cory Connors: 16:11

Well, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you and so they can work with you and, open your next five locations?

Justen Garrity: 16:17

Right. yeah, we're ready to go. probably LinkedIn is a good one. pretty easy to find there. My name's Justin with an E. So it's, there aren't too many of those on LinkedIn, or you can always send us an email via the website. I will admit that the people in the office, their job's to be a gatekeeper, but they sure foil me. They'll forward me the emails.

Cory Connors: 16:35

but

Justen Garrity: 16:35

no, we're very open. I think, the interesting thing about us in composting is we find ourselves in all kinds of interesting spots. Because food waste is, we do a lot of stuff in healthcare. We then the next day we're at, a professional sport venue. And then the next day we're talking to a homeowner's association about a rollout. And we get, we're always open to anything because we've gone a lot of different directions over the years with stuff.

Cory Connors: 17:01

Well, keep up the good work and we'll, we'll put all those in. All that information into the show notes so people can reach out to you. And, yeah, excited to, hear from you. Maybe we'll do another episode in six months or a year and see what the updates are. See what's what changes are happening.

Justen Garrity: 17:19

Sounds good. I'm down anytime, man. Let me know. All

Cory Connors: 17:20

right. Well, thanks again, Justin. Really appreciate your time.

Justen Garrity: 17:24

Well, thank you.