It's become practically second nature now: toss your cans, bottles, plastics, paper and cardboard into the recycling bin and everything else into the garbage. Wheel the bins out to the curb on the appointed day and presto! the contents disappear from your life.
Or do they? That aluminum soda can you just tossed can be recycled into a new can in your fridge 60 days later. The newspaper you read this morning was printed on paper recycled from previous issues. But what happens to all the "yucky stuff," the garbage? Do you care?
Texas Disposal Systems [7] does. The company has built a thriving business by caring about your garbage. Founded in 1977 with one truck and one customer, TDS has grown into the largest independently owned solid waste collection and disposal company in Central Texas, and one of the largest in the nation. Since 1991, it has operated the state's first totally integrated landfill—with recycling, composting and disposal—on a 1,750-acre site 15 miles southeast of downtown Austin.
Fueling the company’s growth over the past three decades is its unexpected definition of all the detritus, from banana peels to old chairs, that we discard every day.
“This isn’t a pile of garbage, it’s a pile of resources,” Jason Sanders, Recycling and Composting Coordinator for TDS, told the Green Teens from Keep Austin Beautiful [8] when they toured the site last summer.
On their visit, the students discovered that to extract those resources—and profit from them—the company’s 12 business units work together to create a complete life cycle for thrown-away objects, gathering and reusing materials that would otherwise wind up in the landfill.
To achieve that goal, TDS has focused on sustainable resource management, developing green industries and economies along the way. From the start, “I was looking for a way to make something out of nothing,” explains Bob Gregory, Chairman, President and principal owner of the company.
Single-stream recycling from Austin and other Central Texas communities is a major contributor to reduced landfill usage. TDS’ complex mechanical systems separate all the contents of our recycling bins and turn them into bales of individual products. In addition to recycling glass, aluminum, plastic and paper, the company trades scrap and precious metals on commodities markets, “turning trash into cash,” says TDS Vice President, Secretary and co-owner Jim Gregory.
Also rescued from the landfill are tires; they’re shredded into resilient playground surfaces—saving countless skinned knees and elbows—and household items, appliances and furniture, which are sold to the public at the TDS resale shop.
Yard waste, brush and other organic materials are kept out of the landfill. They’re ground up and composted in long windrows. The Scarab, a device that resembles a fugitive robot from a sci-fi movie, drives along the windrows to turn and aerate them, accelerating the natural decomposition process. The result is sold to home gardeners and professionals by TDS’ Texas Organic Products unit, through the company’s Garden-Ville [9] retail centers.
Whatever is left from these reclamation efforts will go into the landfill. But even here, environmental considerations are paramount. When Green Teens [8] visited TDS in the scorching summer of 2011, they found no litter on the site, and surprisingly few unpleasant odors.
“We take the job of being stewards of our environment very seriously,” notes Jim Gregory. One component of that stewardship is the company’s carbon forestry initiative: carbon-absorbing, oxygen-releasing trees are grown in a nursery to help offset the carbon emissions generated by TDS’ fleet of trucks.
The company’s most prominent environmental effort, though, is its “edutainment” business unit, Discovery Savanna, an exotic animal ranch [10] just over the ridge from the landfill. Here, among grassy slopes, trees and sparkling streams, more than 80 different species of animals from around the world roam in a hunting-free sanctuary.
African gazelles grazing peacefully next to a landfill? Doesn’t sound likely. But it’s fundamental to the Gregory brothers’ commitment to creating what they call “the most environmentally responsible disposal operation possible. It’s how we earn our stripes everyday.” And it’s how TDS has created a sustainable, profitable business based on the principles of responsible resource management.