Waste Farmers: redemption for the throwaway mindset.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: SMALL [biz]

John-Paul Maxfield envisions the day when hauling trash to a landfill is as unthinkable as smoking on airplanes is now. But that day, he concedes, is 10 or 20 years down the road. In the here and now, Maxfield cites a disturbing stat from the Colorado Association of Recycling.

"In Colorado, our recycling rate is 12.5 percent," he says. "Nationally it's 28.5 percent. And that's not a coincidence. The reason that happens is it's very cheap to throw things away here."

Supporting his point, Maxfield says landfill costs in Colorado range from $10 a ton in metro Denver to between $26.25 to $50 in Eagle and Pitkin counties. By comparison, "In New Jersey it's $72 a ton to throw things away."

Maxfield, 29, hopes to change that throwaway mindset. He had long entertained the idea of a resource-management company devoted to helping companies achieve--or at least strive for--zero waste, but he wasn't sure Denver was ready for it. Then last October he was laid off from his job at a private-equity firm. He decided his idea's time had arrived.

"The job market was dismal, and this is what I always wanted to do," he says, recalling the sense of opportunity he felt when one career door closed for the time being and another opened. "I remember the day I was laid off saying to Carrie, my wife, This is great!"'

Two months later Maxfield launched Waste Farmers, a company focused on helping companies reduce, re-use and recycle their waste--or what Maxfield prefers to call "resources," because in his mind very little of what gets thrown away is a total waste.

Maxfield landed both an investor and well-connected area businessman in Erik Porter, who previously launched two notable companies--Colorado Computer Rental in the mid-'90s and Data393 in 2002--and later sold both.

As of early September, Waste Farmers had secured about 15 clients including Crowne Plaza in downtown Denver, Dazbog Coffee and Snooze Eatery, a bustling breakfast and lunch hangout that debuted in the Ballpark Neighborhood in 2006 and added a second location at 700 N. Colorado Blvd. in July.

Snooze Eatery already was using disposable products made of plant materials at its restaurants, so for Snooze co-owner Adam Schlegel, hiring Waste Farmers for composting for $130 a month was a no-brainer.

"One of our servers is going to walk away from a five-hour shift with $ 130," Schlegel says. "It's minimal. And by doing this we're diverting 95 percent of everything...