By Bill Sullivan
Green Right Now

In these more environmentally savvy times, plenty of folks have taken up composting. Gather up those leftover fruit and vegetable parts, organize a pile in the corner of the backyard, and soon enough, you’ve turned your landfill-clogging garbage into something of real value.

What to do with 2 1/2 tons of leftover produce per week? Frisco's Quest Recycling had the answer. Photo: Quest Recycling

But what to do if you have, say, 2 ½ tons of expired produce…per week? When the world’s largest retailer called with just that problem, Frisco, Texas-based Quest Recycling got to work.

“Some of the big companies – our competition – had the project on their desk for four months and hadn’t been able to come up with a solution,” Jason Smith, Marketing & Business Development Director for Quest, recalls. “We placed the first 34 test stores within two weeks.

“We created a new industry. No one had been doing that on a nation-wide scale of operations.”

In the case of organics, Quest’s solution was decidedly green. Rather than hauling items off to a landfill, Quest’s network of local contractors is diverting about 65 percent of them to compost operations, a considerable upgrade in terms of environmental impact.

“We’re constantly looking for new and better ways to do everything that we do,” Smith says.

In just 3 ½ years, Quest has turned other people’s issues into big business, with an environmentally friendly twist whenever possible. The company currently serves 7,500 locations and handles about 30,000 transactions per week. Gross revenues for this year are expected to top $140 million, up from $32 million just two years ago.

A management company, Quest doesn’t come by and pick up your recyclables. Instead, they find someone who will do just that as economically and responsibly as is feasible. They then oversee the transaction from what Smith describes as “cradle to the grave.”

Much of this involves thinking outside the box. Rather than compete in the relatively crowded space of paper, cardboard or plastics recycling, Quest takes on challenges like…2 ½ tons of past-its-prime produce.

“A lot of your other recycling companies are handling paper, plastics, aluminum and all that – and we WILL do that – but it’s not our primary focus,” Smith says. “We focus on things that were a little non-traditional.”

Quest handles five major types of recycling: Tires, motor oil, expired meats, cooking oil and organics. The process begins with an examination of a client’s needs, followed by the formulation of a plan aimed at limiting costs while also pursuing the greenest end-of-line solution.

All of this is the brainchild of two fellows who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Brian Dick and Jeff Forte were account managers for a company that recycled motor oil. A major client approached them, looking for a solution for disposing of tires. Dick and Forte drew up a concept – on a bar napkin – for a mobile recycling truck with onboard shredders, conveyor belts, etc.

The prospective client loved it. Their boss didn’t.

End of story? Not quite.

Old tires can be ground into crumbs and used in recycled rubber materials. Photo: Quest Recycling

Eventually, Dick and Forte financed the truck with their own money and presented the finished vehicle, plus a signed agreement with the client, to their employer. This time, their fine work earned them a pair of pink slips, but not without a referral to the company’s financial backer, who eventually provided the funding to get Quest off the ground.

Since then, two other partners have bought out the initial financiers, while Dick and Forte remain in charge of the day-to-day operation.

In the last two years, the employee roster has grown from seven to 36 and will probably top 40 by the end of the year. The company is doubling the size of its Frisco Square offices. Dick and Forte own homes in the area and have children in Frisco schools.

“It’s a good community to be in,” Smith says. “It has been very supportive of us.”

Quest management doesn’t claim to have invented the wheel. They see their role as making it turn more easily and efficiently, largely due to attention to detail.

“What we pride ourselves on is our customer service,” Smith said. “Anybody could do what we do, but we want to take that personal approach on a nationwide level and make sure the job is done and done correctly.”

Part of that is providing the client with online tracking of the status of their project, from pickup to final destination. That system also provides sustainability reports to customers each year.

Among that clientele: ARAMARK, the Army Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), numerous VA hospitals, sports stadiums, Penske, AT&T Fleet Maintenance and a number of trucking firms.

The sales pitch is simple.

“We look at what somebody is already budgeting to throw away,” Smith said. “Most people don’t realize you’re paying to put things in your dumpster. Whether that’s rental fees for the unit, pull fees on a monthly basis…there are six or seven levels of fees that are tacked on.

“Our goal is not to increase your bottom line cost at all. We like to be cost neutral or cost negative and give you a better story and a better end product for it.”

That philosophy fits neatly with that of Quest’s sister company, earth911.com. The Web site is the largest environment-based endeavor of its kind, including a feature that allows you to type in your zip code to find where you can dispose of some of your more hard-to-deal-with recyclables.

In its brief life, Quest has seen plenty of cases of one man’s trash becoming another’s treasure: High-fashion handbags made from recycled tires; sink and bathroom porcelain cleaned and milled to create faux granite.

No shortage of trash means no limit to the possibilities.

“You’ve got to make it more financially feasible for the common person,” Smith said. “That’s been the primary hold back to the green movement.”

Quest is finding the sweet spot in that movement, doing good by doing things well.