There’s a pervasive bit of mythology about food waste that it’ll just turn into compost, even in a landfill. It’s not true, but Amanda Weeks is used to the rumor. “Through some kind of magical thinking, people feel that their garbage is breaking down or getting recycled,” she says, “and then they’re not thinking about it more beyond that.”

Weeks is thinking about it. As the founder of a company reimagining the afterlife of stale bread and tossed-out produce, she turns garbage into something you can buy—specifically, into an unusually attractive bottle of household cleaning spray. Veles launched earlier this year as the inaugural product from Ambrosia, the company Weeks founded in New York in 2014 with the mission of diverting and repurposing food waste from landfills.

Billed as “the first closed-loop cleaner,” Veles is made from the water, acetic acid, lactic acid, and alcohol found in post-consumer organic waste. (Weeks gets asked a lot, and no, the spray doesn’t smell like a trash can—it’s scented with lavender, bergamot, and mint essential oils.) A dish detergent and farming fertilizer will follow; eventually, Weeks wants to make base ingredients for skincare products. Already, the company has been acquired by waste consulting company Recycle Track Systems.

The post Bloomberg: The Household Product Cleaning Up More Than Just Your Countertops appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

• Hear how Hannah molded her policy degree to focus on internal company policy compared to federal policy.
• Give yourself permission to discover your place in the green building movement by learning to use internships, certifications, and collegiate experiences to build a career you love.
• The benefits of Recycle Track Systems (RTS) to divert from landfills.
  Hannah’s pro tips from the broad range of clients from stadiums, office buildings and being part of the first university in the US to reach carbon neutrality.

The post GBES Podcast Featuring RTS Sustainability Manager Hannah Moskowitz appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

Allyn is instrumental in breaking down barriers for minority groups. A board member of Out and Equal, Allyn spearheaded the first-ever transgender recruiting effort. He was also among the first set of black executives to launch the Black Executive Leadership Council and has been actively involved in the intersection of tech and diversity with Out in Tech, Lesbians who Tech and Out 4 U. Allyn’s commitment to fostering an inclusive environment has received national recognition. Most recently, Allyn received the Brooklyn Nets Jason Collins Award sponsored by the NBA for courage and leadership in the LGBTQ community. He is an OUTstanding LGBT+ Role Model, a Diversity Best Practices’ Above and Beyond Award winner and named to Diversity MBA world’s top 100 business leaders under 50. Allyn is currently the President and CTO of RTS, a waste and recycling management company that combines technology with high-touch service to make disposal easier, smarter and more responsible.

The post RTS President & CTO Allyn L. Shaw on the EMpower 100 Ethnic Minority Executives List 2020 appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

Recycle Track Systems (RTS) recently asked its COO, Adam Pasquale, to weigh in on how companies should handle their waste and why recycling properly is more important than ever.

The post A Q&A on Managing Waste & Recycling Programs as Businesses Re-open, with Adam Pasquale, COO of RTS appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

RTS works a lot with corporate companies to improve their waste management systems. For example, RTS works with WeWork, Whole Foods, and Citi Field to manage waste and increase sustainability.

Greg Lettieri is the CEO of RTS and Adam Pasquale is the COO of RTS. The pair join Cheddar to explain the success this year has brought. RTS has expanded to other cities including Philadelphia and Washington D.C.. The company is looking forward to a strong 2018.

– Cheddar TV

The post Cheddar TV: RTS: Revolutionizing Trash Disposal appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

• Recycle Track Systems (RTS), a New York-based technology company that offers on-demand and sustainability-oriented collection service to commercial customers, has recently opened two new offices in Philadelphia and Tysons Corner, VA, to serve the Washington, D.C. market.
• Next, the company has set its sights on offices in Chicago and Boston. Service providers in other markets are currently working with RTS on a case-by-case basis after going through their standard vetting process.
• Recently, Lew Frankfort — the former chairman and CEO of Coach — joined the RTS board. According to a press release, Frankfort will be serving as “both an investor and advisor.”

Dive Insight:

Since launching in 2014, RTS has quietly grown its presence in the New York market and lined up accounts with some of the city’s larger companies. The pitch to customers is that they can offer real-time tracking, service confirmation, sustainability data and on-site education to help achieve high diversion targets. The pitch to service providers is that they can get them access to clients such as Whole Foods and the Barclays Center that might otherwise be out of reach.

This latest growth comes after RTS became a certified B-Corp in March and announced $11.7 million in Series A funding in July. Though the company had already been operating outside of New York, this investment and growing interest motivated them to make the expansion official.

“We see a need for the type of service we’re proving regarding sustainability stacking, training and high service quality very similar to New York City,” CEO Gregory Lettieri told Waste Dive. “We believe in feet on the street. So we believe that our RTS employees need to be there for hauler relationships as well as customer relationships and we don’t believe in the virtual approach.”

Following New York’s recent “zero waste” push, both Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are also in the early stages of rethinking their recycling efforts. Expanding organics processing infrastructure is a priority for both cities, but Lettieri said the need is even more acute in the Philadelphia market. This point has been reinforced by recent research on local opportunities and some groups have called for statewide food waste recycling laws in Pennsylvania to improve options.

RTS has found particular success with clients that want help maximizing their diversion — or are required to by state or local regulations — and their expansion pattern has followed suit. Last year, Chicago announced a commercial recycling mandate. Boston could eventually set its own “zero waste” goals and is currently covered by a commercial organics diversion mandate in Massachusetts. RTS is also planning to exhibit at the upcoming New Jersey State League of Municipalities Conference, following the enactment of multiple new laws regarding food waste .

Among the industry’s larger companies, any business model that doesn’t directly involve ownership of vehicles and processing or disposal infrastructure is often dismissed. In some cases this has even led to clashes over customers, legal and otherwise, around the country. So far the RTS team — which includes multiple industry veterans — has been glad to expand without purchasing a single truck or worrying about the direct effects of commodity prices. They’ve found a sweet spot cultivating relationships and navigating what can often be different worlds between higher end customers and independent haulers. The results of how that model scales are officially now of interest beyond just the New York market.

– Cole Rosengren | WasteDive

The post Recycle Track Systems quietly expands with offices in DC and Philadelphia markets appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

Indeed, while companies have sprung up around everything from on-demand family care to shipping, the waste industry — valued at anywhere from $45 billion to $65 billion when accounting for collection services, treatment and disposal — has largely been left untouched by tech founders.

That’s changing. Already, one company, nine-year-old Rubicon Global in Atlanta, has raised more than $145 million from investors — including private equity king Henry Kravis — to steal away market share from incumbents like Waste Management and Republic Services. Now, RTS is aiming to do the same by making it simple for customers to schedule on-demand pick-ups through its phone app.

A high-tech garbage service may sound ridiculous to the uninitiated. But it’s no joke to customers like WeWork, Whole Foods and SoulCycle that have signed multi-year contracts in exchange for RTS’s flexible pricing options, along with notifications about when a truck has arrived and reports about exactly where their waste is being sent.

Investors are taking the company seriously, too. For starters, RTS is an asset-light business. Instead of purchasing its own trucks, RTS is partnering with a growing number of mid-size, independent haulers that it provides with feature-rich tablets to make their work more efficient — even when they aren’t being used in service to RTS.

Another apparent part of RTS’s appeal is that it’s profitable, though that might change, now that the 17-person company has raised $11.7 million in Series A funding from the Boston-based growth equity firm Volition Capital —  money it plans to use to hit the gas. (Notably, Volition was the first outside money into Chewy, a pet supplies company that sold to PetSmart earlier this year in the biggest e-commerce sale to date, ever.)

To learn more, we talked yesterday with RTS co-founder and CEO Gregory Lettieri about the company and the opportunity it’s chasing. Our chat has been edited for length.

TC: Your business is centered around taking the guesswork out of the garbage-collection process. How did you decide this was something you could turn into a business?

GL: I met my co-founder Adam [Pasquale] about 12 years ago. We lived in the same apartment complex in New Jersey. A couple of years ago, I was working as a SVP at Bank of America, building tech portals for traders. Adam is meanwhile four generations in waste recycling; his father and grandfather before him [operated their own sanitation company]. One day, we were on a couch, watching a soccer game, and we got to talking about this idea and I think within 30 days we’d created the company.

TC: Is the idea to sort of complement the waste management services that are out there, or to replace them? Is this a service that’s focused mostly on customers who care about sustainability?

GL: It matters a lot to high sustainability customers, who want to know that their efforts to separate out food waste isn’t [a squandered effort]. They can now see that an organic truck picked up their material and took it to a waste energy facility or to a farm, and we can provide real numbers, not estimates.

We could work alongside [traditional waste vendors]. But there’s no reason to do that. We can compete head-to-head with them and beat them. In this business, you want to own the entire waste stream. That’s when you can affect change. You can train customers: here’s how you divert more, here’s how you get more out of the landfill . . .

TC: Say I’m using a waste service that’s basically fine. Beyond the tracking piece of your technology, why do I stop using my service and start using yours? How does the on-demand piece work?

GL: You want to get rid of something, extra material, anything that doesn’t fit in a garbage bag. WeWork has broken chairs sometimes, broken desks. Throughout its portfolio, especially when it’s remodeling a space, it has materials to get rid of. We pick them up.

TC: How do you charge? One fee for an unlimited number of on-demand pick-ups per month?

GL: We establish yearly contracts, charging so much per month for an office space after we do an audit on the business and establish that it generates, say, 50 bags of garbage in a set amount of time. Everything above that then is extra.

TC: Whose trucks are you using?

GL: Trucks that we don’t own. There are 18,000 mid-tier independent hauling companies in the U.S., and what [we’re telling them is that] we have the technology; we can get these clients. We’re using tech to fill out these routes that already exist. These trucks are traveling seven days a week anyway, but we’re providing them access to business that they didn’t have before. We’re bringing together these independent operators to create our own virtual fleet.

TC: You’re in New York, where Waste Management doesn’t operate anymore because it was too expensive. 

GL: They pulled out five-plus years ago because it wasn’t profitable for them. New York is very competitive. There are 120 licensed [waste management] companies. But it’s a great breeding ground for us. We work with 10 operators in New York, and we might add another one to two operators, but that’s sufficient enough to have operators to service the entire city.

TC: Where else are you operating?

GL: Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. We’re also in other markets, including Boston and San Francisco, but we haven’t employed our full approach there.

TC: What does your business look like in those other markets?

GL: San Francisco is a single territory market, for example, so we operate there as a consultant for our East Coast-based clients that have sites in California, like WeWork.

TC: You’re basically overseeing a marketplace. Can you share any metrics with us that highlight your growth to date?

GL: We’d rather not get into our numbers publicly. But we do have two [groups to please]. One is the “generator” as we say in this industry — it’s the customer that’s producing waste, like Whole Foods. Our other customer is the companies that own the garbage trucks.

You need customers, because the more customers you have, the more hauler relationships you have; it’s additional revenue for them. And the more haulers you have, the more access you have to cities and markets.

In some markets, we approach haulers first, then we’re putting salespeople there. In other markets, we have more salespeople and we need more hauler relationships.

TC: There’s also another market you might try tackling eventually. Can you elaborate?

GL: Because we’re able to separate out and track what’s on these trucks, we can turn that material into additional revenue. There’s a $90 billion secondary market for commodities like plastic and cardboard that are taken in big quantities and then sold to [specific] markets in the U.S. and Asia.

For example, right now, some of our customers will have us pick up broken light fixtures or construction materials. Sometimes, they’ll ask us to pick up and handle their electronics recycling. We have relationships with local facilities that will break up the circuit boards and tubes and separate them into different containers and send them out to the appropriate buyers. It’s not a huge part of our business today but it will be as we grow over time.

People are interested in smart cities and smart trucks, and controlling the flow of material and waste is only becoming more important.

– Connie Loizos | TechCrunch

The post An ‘Uber For Garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7 million in series a funding appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

“I want to bring the waste industry into the future,” said Lettieri, a former Great Kills resident. “I want companies to look toward recycling material instead of bringing waste to a landfill.”

And with the notion in mind, Lettieri, along with his longtime friend, Adam Pasquale, launched RTS (Recycle Track Systems) in March 2015.

“Adam is the fourth generation in his family in the waste business. …We hired a team of developers to help build out the technology. It’s very similar to what you see in the car service industry or how you order food today,” said Lettieri, who formerly worked in the technology department for Bank of America.

“In our on-demand world, where packages are delivered globally within 24 hours and a car can be ordered on a app, we have created similar technology to bring that type of efficiency to the waste and recycling industry,” he added.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

RTS customers can use their iPhone application to request removal of bulk or junk material on-demand, said Lettieri.

“Simply downloading the RTS app will allow customers easy access to ordering waste and recycling pick-up ranging from organic waste to any bulk curbside items,” he said, noting RTS transports more than 1 million pounds of organic food waste each month for composting in local farms.

The company’s clients include Whole Foods, WeWork, Soul Cycle, Juice Press, and waste and recycling for Liberty Island and Ellis Island.

HELPING ISLAND BUSINESSES

RTS started with a Staten Island rollout and has rapidly expanded on the East Coast. Partnerships with Staten Island natives, such as Century Waste owner Marc Savino from Dongan Hills, have been key to the company’s mission of environmental sustainability, Lettieri said.

“Century Waste already has a robust service operation in New York and New Jersey. By working with RTS, we are able to support their on-demand requests with trucks already on the road. We also worked together in building one of the biggest compost routes in New York City,” said Savino.

A greener Staten Island is what Lettieri hopes to accomplish,” he said.

“Growing up on Staten Island, all you heard about was the landfill. I am proud that RTS, a company with Staten Island DNA, is helping to change the recycling and carting industry. We service some of the largest buildings, hotels and popular restaurants in New York City. Helping implement recycling programs and giving customers the ability to confirm the material was actually recycled through our technology platform delivers a new level of accountability and service to the industry,” said Lettieri.

– Tracey Porpora | SILive

The post New recycle on-demand company brainchild of Staten Island native appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

Among these professionals were eight of the industry’s top CEOs: Jim Fish, Waste Management; Ron Mittelstaedt, Waste Connections; John Casella, Casella Waste Systems; Stephen Jones, Covanta; Inigo Sanz, FCC Environmental Services; Gregory Lettieri, Recycle Track Systems; Richard Burke, Advanced Disposal; and David Biderman, SWANA. Waste Dive sat down with each leader separately to ask for unique advice on topics like safety practices, M&As and developing company culture.

Ever wondered how these leaders have succeeded in such a competitive industry? Then sit back, relax and crank up the volume. This is Talkin’ Trash with Waste Dive.

– Kristin Musulin & Cole Rosengren | WasteDive

The post Talkin’ trash with Waste Dive: Advice from 8 of the industry’s top CEO’s appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.

Since establishing the business, Lettieri has helped develop four unique technologies to improve customer retention, training, collections and services and grow the company.

In addition to running RTS, Lettieri participates in and supports Staten Island Community for the Lifestyles of the Disabled Charity Group, a nonprofit that helps young adults and adults with special needs find successful employment opportunities. He also produced two musical soundtracks for NBC’s “Peter Pan Live!” and “The Wiz Live!” as well as other investments on Broadway.

Lettieri recently received a Waste360 40 Under 40 award for his outstanding contributions to the waste and recycling industry, and he spoke with us about how he came up with the concept of RTS and how his firm is keeping up with the competition in the industry’s burgeoning technology sector.

Waste360: How did you come up with the concept of Recycle Track Systems?

Gregory Lettieri: My cofounder Adam Pasquale and I have been friends for more than 12 years. He’s fourth generation in the waste and recycling industry, and I have more than 10 years of experience in technology product development, product delivery and executive management experience.

We came up with the concept of Recycle Track Systems when I was the senior vice president of Bank of America’s technology department and building technology platforms for investment bankers and traders, and Adam was working for one of the largest waste haulers in NYC. We lived in the same apartment building at the time, and we were discussing the waste and recycling industry while watching a World Cup soccer game and enjoying some beers. He mentioned that he thought technology could disrupt the industry, and that idea sparked my interest. I asked him to do a presentation for me so I could better understand his ideas, and three weeks later we had a firm business plan and applied for our licenses.

I saw our idea as an opportunity where we could build our own business and technology that could be utilized to help collect waste and track recyclable material. And that’s exactly what Recycle Track Systems became when we launched it in March 2015.

Waste360: Tell us about your role as cofounder and CEO and some of your responsibilities.

Gregory Lettieri: We started this company as a true startup. Before we hired a team, it was just Adam and I in a two-person office. It’s a unique thing to grow so quickly, but we brought on employees who are experts in different areas of the business so that really helped us start off on the right foot.

My expertise is really creating and maintaining the team environment. From day one, Adam and I have focused on building in scale with the right team, and every hire that we have continues to be the right person for the right role.

We currently have 12 full-time employees and a handful of part-time and technology contractors who write code for us, and we are looking to triple the amount of employees that we have in the next six to eight months. A big part of my role right now is to help find the right people to fill our upcoming open positions.

Waste360: How have you helped grow the company in just 25 months?

Gregory Lettieri: We have seen revenue grow tremendously month over month, which is interesting because our business is a recurring business model. We are focused on signing contracts and retaining recurring business, and that’s really where our revenue growth is coming from.

Our brand is also powerful, and that leads to additional revenue. Buying RTS.com was a fantastic purchase for us, and creating Rudy the Truck for our social media accounts has also been a great branding factor for us. Our brand, RTS, is trusted because it’s three letters. When you think of three letters, you think of UPS, NBC and other trusted three-letter brands. We are proud to be a three-letter brand, and we will continue to prove that we are a trusted brand as we expand our business.

Waste360: Since launching RTS, what challenges have you faced and how did you overcome them?

Gregory Lettieri: Our biggest challenge was finding a way to show value to our hauling partners. We built a technology platform that operates without trucks, and since we don’t own trucks, we had to prove that our technology could operate in trucks and improve customer retention, training, collections and services. That was the biggest unknown for us when we first started, but now we are able to show the value of our products to customers and that keeps us moving in the right direction.

Waste360: How are you keeping up with the competition in the technology sector of the waste and recycling industry?

Gregory Lettieri: From a technology standpoint, I think we are leading the way with our four technology products—a customer-facing application for smartphones, a tablet equipped with turn-by-turn GPS truck routing and a digital routing sheet, a desktop CRM tool for haulers and customers and an internal application that remotely tracks trucks and service orders.

We are staying ahead of the competition by constantly making updates to those four technologies. The technologies work very well, and it’s really about adding additional features to them to support the changing needs of the industry.

We also have a niche in food waste recycling, which is top of mind for a lot of people in the industry right now. We have agreements in place with companies like Whole Foods, Juice Press, Dean and Deluca, WeWork, Soul Cycle, etc., to pick up their food waste and recycling materials. We track the materials as they travel to composting and recycling facilities, and we provide these companies with detailed reports that show how much material was actually recycled or composted. That service and provided data is a huge win for companies that are hiring sustainability managers and directors and taking the next steps to better the environment.

Waste360: In addition to your role at RTS, you helped produce “Peter Pan Live!”, “The Wiz Live!” and “Something Rotten”. Tell us about that experience.

Gregory Lettieri: I worked with a team of other producers to raise capital to put together the shows. The production company I am associated with owns the music rights to the shows, and I helped work on the soundtracks and music downloads. It was very exciting to be part of those shows, and I see myself staying very involved with the Broadway community in the future.

Waste360: You also work with the Staten Island Community for the Lifestyles of the Disabled Charity Group. Tell us about that nonprofit and your role with that.

Gregory Lettieri: The nonprofit provides young adults and adults with special needs with successful job opportunities, such as working at the zoo or working with accountants during tax season.

I have a special needs brother, and the Staten Island Community for the Lifestyles of the Disabled Charity Group is very important to my family. My mother is on the board of directors, my retired father is an employee and I help sponsor events and fundraisers.

Waste360: What advice do you have for the future generation of waste and recycling industry workers?

Gregory Lettieri: The industry is massive in both size and scope and it’s very demanding, but there are a lot of great opportunities. Currently, there is a lot of potential to increase recycling and food waste recycling in all markets, and that’s very exciting.

In addition to that, technology has and will continue to change how service, collections and recycling are done. Technology has entered the industry, and we are just at the forefront of what’s to come. I would advise coming into the industry with an open mind and fresh ideas. There is always room for new technologies and improvements to processes because the industry is always changing.

– Mallory Szczepanski | Waste360

The post Lettieri uses his passion for technology to grow RTS appeared first on Recycle Track Systems.