Erick Becerril wants to get his hands on your garbage.
If that seems odd and unsavory, consider the context. Becerril, at age 23, is the enthusiastic founder of a Summit County waste diversion business called Faction and Company. His business takes care of waste from residential and small commercial clients by ensuring that separated compostable materials, standard recycling, and reusable items end up in the right place.
For Becerril, the right place for waste is getting it composted and upcycled – the process of converting old products into new ones in order to repurpose them for new uses – as much as possible. Hence, Becerril’s passion for your leftovers, whether they are last year’s skis or kitchen table, or, even better, last night’s pad thai. Since the EPA estimates that over 60% of the municipal solid waste that ends up in landfills is organic material comprised of food scraps, yard trimmings, paper and paperboard, Becerril is especially keen to expand his compost efforts to ensure that your organic waste never meets the landfill at all.
“The largest impact on our land that I see is the daily waste routines of single stream waste disposal,” says Becerril. “This inspired me to develop a business to fulfill the need to efficiently separate compost, recycling, and waste before reaching the landfill.”
A cutting-edge education that opens doors
Last fall, the young Summit County entrepreneur decided to grow his capacity to create a greener world by enrolling in Colorado Mountain College’s new Bachelor of Arts in sustainability studies program. He feels that the experience and knowledge he’s gaining will significantly help his business grow.
“I find myself in a cutting-edge program that is teaching society about the repercussions and responsibilities that we must hold to preserve our future,” says Becerril. “It (the degree) has opened up a lot of doors for me, not only in the business sector but also just being a professional within my community. You’re able to just flourish and be who you want to be in that program.”
The road to reuse
Becerril came to the bachelor’s of sustainability program after a three-year stint as a permit technician for Summit County Community Development Building Inspections department. He had already earned an associate degree in construction management from Front Range Community College, and was passionate about sustainable building. He wanted to see if he could marry his skills and interests to help green up the construction process in Summit County.
While Becerril was encouraged by the local building code’s emphasis on energy efficiency, he also felt the very same codes sometimes put up barriers to homeowners’ capacities to reuse recycled building materials. He became increasingly intrigued by the idea of recycling and upcycling old building materials, appliances and other waste. He saw a recycling and composting business as one way he could attain that goal.
In the summer of 2011, Becerril and business partner Ethan Mason started Faction as part of a three-month pilot partnership in composting with the Summit County government and the High Country Conservation Center (HCCC). Both had just completed the Master Mountain Composter class, a program co-hosted by HCCC and Colorado Mountain College. In class, they learned that Summit County residents wanted to compost, but there was no transportation system in place to support it. They decided to fill in the gap.
In the pilot project, Summit County residents who signed on were able to drop off their food scraps and non-recyclable paper waste at the Frisco Recycling Center for a cost of $51 for the entire summer, and Faction and Company took care of it from there. Sixty residents participated, and the partners hope the program can expand to Breckenridge this summer. After the three-month pilot project ended, Faction continued on as a for-profit company dedicated to continuing to keep compost and other recyclables out of the landfill.
Accolades for making Summit County greener
Faction is now on its way to growing into a viable business. The company currently composts all food waste from the kitchen of A-Basin Ski Resort, helping them divert more than 5000 pounds of food waste from the landfill. He’s acquiring new residential and commercial business customers monthly, and handles the overload from Summit County’s Family Intercultural Resource Center’s Thrift Store, storing excess books and other reusable materials that the store can’t handle until he can find a new home for them.
Becerril’s energy, passion and commitment to keeping Summit County a greener place earned him HCCC’s Julia Butterfly Hill Individual Achievement Award in 2011. The award is bestowed annually on “an individual who makes Summit County greener and keeps an eye on the environmental movement of our community.” In 2011, he also took part in Leadership Summit, a community program that builds leadership skills and connects leaders from non-profits, businesses, and government in Summit County.
Hopes for a zero-waste society
Awards are great, but Becerril’s real goal stretches towards a much broader, altruistic end. While he believes Summit County is a community that values and works towards sustainability, he says our species’ record on the planet as a whole needs to vastly improve.
“I love the community here,” says Becerril. “There’s a lot of really amazing people. This community is definitely passionate about the environment, and I think that’s really cool. That’s something you don’t really find everywhere.”
“I hope that our society realizes the effects of resource depletion before its too late. We only have one planet so we need to love what we have and take care of it,” he says.
“We have not done the best job these past several decades, so it is up to students to obtain the knowledge required to steer us in the right direction. Our lifespan as humans is half of a second on a clock showing the life of this earth – yet we have done devastating impacts to our natural resources. We must find a new route of living. I hope that one day we will be a zero-waste society that can develop new ideas that help develop energy out of our waste.”
By Kate Lapides.