Soil & Mulch Producer News May/Jun2011

Page 1

May / June 2011

Vol. V No. 3

Serving Soil, Mulch, Compost, & Biofuel Professionals

NEWS

Attention Readers !

Are you looking for Products, Equipment or Services for your business? If so, please check out these leading companies advertised in this issue: Bagging Systems

Amadas Industries – pg 11 Hamer LLC – pg 5 PremierTech Chronos – pg 6 Rethceif Packaging – pg 4

Compost Cover ClearSpan – pg 15

Compost, Mulch & Wood Waste For Sale Litco International – pg 14

Compost Turners

HCL Machine Works – pg 10

Mulch Coloring Equipment/Colorants Colorbiotics – pg 8 Nature’s Reflections – pg 16

Plastic Removal System Airlift Separator – pg 16

Shredders, Grinders, Chippers & Screening Systems Allu Group Inc – pg 15 Doppstadt – pg 13 EarthSaver Equipment – pg 10 Morbark Inc. – pg 2 Peterson – pg 7 REMU – pg 20 (back cover) Screen Machine Industries – pg 9 Screen USA – pg 10 West Salem Machinery – pg 12 Wildcat/Vermeer – pg 19

Transport Trailers Travis Trailers – pg 17

Turning the Industry Green with Compost as Top Dressing BY P.J. HELLER

E

stimating that there are some 46.5 million acres of lawn turf in the United States, Keith Schuler is seeing lots of green. Nearly $18 billion worth. That’s how much he says could be generated annually by compost producers if they can convince the public — especially gardeners and landscapers — to use compost as a top dressing for lawns. And that’s only top dressing the turf once a year. Do it twice a year, in the spring and the fall, and the annual revenue could jump to $36 billion. “There’s a huge potential,” says Schuler, a landscaper who owns LawnStylist. Inc., in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton. “The market hasn’t been tapped into.” While commercial composters are providing a valuable service by converting green and other waste streams into a beneficial product, the resulting material still needs to be used, Schuler notes. “You just can’t turn it into compost and leave it,” he says in pushing for a concerted effort to market it as top dressing for lawns. “If we could get every homeowner in the United States to top dress their lawn every spring, we don’t have a [compost] marketing problem any more,” says Bob Engel, vice president and an owner of Engel & Gray, which operates a regional composting facility in Santa Maria on California’s central coast.

Recognizing the potential of the market, Engel & Gray recently launched its “top-off ” marketing program aimed at providing landscape/ garden professionals with the tools they need to sell top dressing to their customers. “Everybody is promoting top dressing and probably has a brochure on it, but what we’ve put together is a complete marketing kit for the gardener,” Engel explains. “The goal is to get the gardener to sell the top dressing and to get the gardener to educate the customer rather than us as a compost producer.” Other compost producers also see the potential. St. Louis Compost in Missouri, that region’s largest compost producer which processes some 500,000 cubic yards of green material annually, not only promotes top dressing lawns, but rents a self-propelled top dresser, manufactured by Ecolawn, to help simplify and reduce operating and labor costs of the application. As the public looks for ways to reduce the use of chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides — in some cases driven by state and local government regulations — compost is the perfect solution, according to industry officials. “Compost is the quintessential fertilizer,” Schuler says, adding that it is “foundational to any natural organic lawn care program.” “It’s the ultimate in natural lawn care,” Engel agrees. “As compost producers, we need Continued on page 3


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.