Business Spotlight: Black Oak Organics

Across America in homes and corporations, small towns and major cities, people are choosing to go green for the environment. For Craig Post and Alan Chappell, co-owners of Black Oak Organics LLC, a choice to begin a green company two years ago has simply blossomed.

As a landfill diversion company, Springfield-based Black Oak Organics collects materials normally sent to landfills and turns them into compost at its seven-acre complex in Verona. Most are organic materials, including food and wood waste, construction materials, contaminated paper and cardboard.

"We take those materials, and through the process of composting, amend them into erosion control materials or compost, the major portion of our company," Post said.

Clients pay Black Oak Organics to collect their recyclable materials, and the clients get credits they can exchange for the compost produced by the waste. Black Oak also sells its erosion control materials.

The pair started out with 25 food-waste customers and 12 wood-waste customers. Today, the company's customer base has doubled to about 65, including Price Cutter, Drury University and Waste Corporation of America.

Growing green

Black Oak Organics combines Chappell's 26 years in composting, construction and demolition debris with Post's 26 years in the solid waste business, including six years as owner of Springfield's Advantage Waste.

Permitted by the state Department of Natural Resources in 2005, Black Oak launched in 2007 under a two-acre pilot project. By midyear, Post and Chappell added two acres.

Recently, the company leased office space at 5660 W. U.S. Highway 60 in Springfield and received state approval to develop a 17-acre complex at 14062 Lawrence 2170 in Verona, where employees compost old lumber, drywall, pallets, cardboard, paper, wax board, root balls and large trees, as well as food waste from grocery stores, restaurants and industrial processes.

Black Oak Organics also has developed a program providing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and construction recycling services to divert construction materials. With sort separation by the contractor, Black Oak is able to divert 75 percent of what would go to a landfill to alternative markets. The majority is composting, scrap metal, and brick and concrete fill-ins. Post said the company returns the materials from the site back to the project as compost to complete the sustainability circle of the project.

Among their products, the company creates small amounts of mulch and erosion control for construction sites; however, the biggest product made is the compost.

"The compost ... increases the nutrients in our ground for better growth and better soil," Post said. "It reduces the amount of water usage, it reduces the amount of fertilizer you use, so once again we do not have fertilizer going down into our streams."

Such efforts netted Black Oak Organics $400,000 in 2007 revenues, evenly split between compost and incoming materials sales.

Sustainability rewarded

In April, the Springfield-Greene County Environmental Advisory Board honored Black Oak Organics with the Choose Environmental Excellence Award.

"We have been promoting people that have been green or perform a green service for the community," said J.D. Slaughter, chairman of the board and Greene County environmental health planner. "The city has adopted a green building policy. The last couple (of) years we have been interested in people promoting efficiency, using green building materials and Energy Star appliances. Black Oak Organics (keeps) things out of the landfill, reusing organic materials, mulching them up and turning them into other products, which can be used. This is a green, environmentally-friendly process."

Slaughter said Black Oak also helps in the LEED-Silver Certification policy recently adopted by the city. New buildings in the city have to meet certain criteria for certification.

"Part of the process for getting points is also reducing your recycling string, (just) like taking stuff to the landfill is reducing landfill debris," Slaughter added. "This is where Black Oak Organics would come in; they would take all the organic stuff like scrap wood products and turn it into mulch to be used as landscaping around the project when the project is finished."

As for the future, Post sees sustainable practices and energy having a good foundation.

"Our business - reducing the greenhouse gases at landfills because we are taking the organics out - obviously leads us to topics that are high on everyone's list," he said.[[In-content Ad]]