Ray Leard - The Recipe for Community Around Compost

[00:00:09] Dominique: Hello. Welcome. Another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:13] Adam: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people, making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Dominique, the sustainability expert.

[00:00:21] Dominique: And I am so glad to be here alongside Adam, the social enterprise extraordinaire. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact in their job or community and have done something about it.

[00:00:31] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists. This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas.

[00:00:39] Dominique: So whether you're tuning in today during a walk, or maybe you're just listening at home or just hanging out. Today, Adam and I are joined by Ray Leard. Ray is the king of compost. Ray has founded the Compost Exchange in 2012. The Compost Exchange is the first and largest service provider of residential, curbside food scrap recycling, and composting in the Central Ohio area.

[00:01:02] Dominique: This means Ray has paved the way for waste diversion through composting for a community of about 3 million people. He has since sold the company and has launched a new organization called Purely American Organics, which we're gonna get into in our next episode. This means that today we're really diving into composting as a sustainability solution. Looking at how one innovator has figured out how to get a community to see food waste differently. Thanks for joining us, Ray.

[00:01:25] Ray: Glad to be here, guys. Really.

[00:01:28] Adam: Yeah. We are really excited.

[00:01:29] Dominique: I've definitely admired what you've built in Central Ohio for a long time, and I have a lot of fun questions I'm excited to get to. 

[00:01:35] Ray: Okay. I'm ready. 

[00:01:36] Dominique: My first question for you is, how would you describe your role in advancing composting in Central Ohio? 

[00:01:42] Ray: My role at this point looking back as far as how it happened, right? And you know, you're back there and you don't think, "Oh yeah, in three years I'm gonna be, you know." No, it wasn't like that at all. I had started in Athens as an experiment, okay?

[00:01:56] Dominique: Okay.

[00:01:56] Ray: Because when I got there in 2007, I never thought about this topic. And I brought my company from, which I had for 25 years from Norfolk, Virginia, and I brought to back to Ohio where I, as I like to say to back in Virginia when I was in that mindset where they like to work. It's sarcastically a little bit, but more kind of ticked off at not being able to find the right people. 

[00:02:20] Ray: But I moved back finally in 2007 and moved to Athens where they kind of paid me to come and create some jobs, and had seven acres and built a 12,000 square foot building and started going to the farmer's market, which I, you know, I love Farmer's market, so I was always at Athens every Saturday, and I kept hearing about this thing about composting. You know, somebody should do this because they had done a study and a lot of people won't wanna do it. I said, "Well, you know, you had this study, why don't you do it?" No one wanted to spend the money or risk the money.

[00:02:47] Ray: So I thought, it's only money. You know, this is kind of neat that this opportunity that people wanna do it. After about a year of under the radar doing it, right? I actually got legit and got licensed by the EPA, built a 8,000 square foot hoop house building to do it in and skid steer and the whole nine yards as an experiment. Over the next three years I had about 50 commercial accounts, which I picked up for free. Just to kind of get them to do it, right?

[00:03:14] Dominique: How'd you afford that?

[00:03:15] Ray: It's only money. The business that I had became more of a seasonal business, so I had the time. Okay?

[00:03:23] Adam: Mm-Hmm.

[00:03:23] Dominique: What was the work you were doing?

[00:03:24] Ray: Oh, we had a company called Purely American, and we made bean soup mixes. It was a handcrafted, gourmet upscale kind of a thing. And yeah, it was a real craft. I could spend the whole thing doing, talking about that. We sold to several hundred gourmet shops and they were still out there in the hinterlands, all over the country. And in 10 years they were mostly gone. And so I kind of saw the writing on the wall even as I was transitioning to back to Ohio. More of the business was taken up by the Walmarts, the Kroger's, the Whole Foods was becoming really dominant as a powerhouse, but the distributors were taken over.

[00:04:00] Ray: Anyway, so 

[00:04:00] Ray: I discovered composting and put together in the winter of '13, I went to the Farmer's Market Committee and I was at a table with three or four others in on that committee. And I said, "Yeah, I wanna do a booth in which they bring me their food scraps each week." And the guy paused and he kind of leaned in across the table and he said, "And they're gonna pay you?" I said, "Yeah, five bucks a month, that's cheap. They're coming anyway." And you know, a year later we had 200 members. They were all walking around with my bucket 'cause at that time we actually swapped buckets.

[00:04:29] Adam: Oh, wow.

[00:04:29] Ray: So I gave 'em the freshly clean one. "I'm gonna use this as my basket." And people would come by and say, "All these baskets, what's the deal?" And I explained and they signed up and then somebody else signed up and we had 200 members in a year. And it was, you know, really successful. It was a blast because I was working 24/7. Doing the one business and then this, I didn't care. It was great. It was fun. And so I had a really big compost pile at home. That's where I took it all.

[00:04:54] Dominique: I was gonna say, where was all the compost going? 

[00:04:56] Ray: Yeah. When I first started, it was my house. And then, of course, the business started, I had the building to take it to. But in '14, I decided my business with the bean soup mixes was done. It was getting kind of top heavy with major customers. And if you lose one or two of those, you are toast. I don't really like that type of toast. So I decided it's time to close it. So I close it down and I put the building up for sale on all the seven acres. 

[00:05:19] Ray: And at that juncture, I mean this is like meant to be, the local recycling folks that were run by the Hawking Athens County Solid Waste district. They were the recyclers as a separate nonprofit. And their facility, which I used to bike by just on my Sunday afternoons, I would go out into the country, into the country roads and pass by. That's really, really not very well kept or, I mean, I could tell old equipment. All right? So they were looking, I didn't know this at the time, but they were looking for a place to buy to put in a murf for the region. 

[00:05:51] Adam: For listeners who are listening and don't know what murf is, can you explain that?

[00:05:54] Ray: Ah, oh yes. A murf is the acronym for material recycling facility or something really close to that. It's a place where instead of having seven cans on the curb, glass, plastic, paper whatever, you have one container, everything goes in. It's a lot easier. The theory is, and it's proven, that you get more people to do it if it's easier, right? So that's what they wanted it for. Their purchase of trying to find some land somewhere. 

[00:06:18] Ray: So I put my building up for sale just as the big one. And when I built the building, this is so funny. When I built the building, the guy asked me, "How high do you want it?" I thought, "Eh, sixteen's good," but when I sell it, I might need the height. And no idea, build it three feet higher and that's why they bought the building. 'Cause they could conveyor systems need height. And that's what happens. And then between 2007 and 20 15, the bank problem happened in 2008. 

[00:06:45] Adam: Yep. 

[00:06:46] Ray: And I got a grant to do a solar package on the top of that thing. It was like, unbelievable. So they were like, "This is just perfect," when they found me. And I probably saved them 50% of the purchase by having the land and the building there that they finished, they kind of fixed it up. And then I said, "you guys are recyclers, right?" "Yeah." "You wanna hit a real grand slammer?" And they said, "Okay." And the compost building was 50 feet away from the other building. I said, "You should do the composting too. No one in the country does them both. It's either you're a recycler of paper and plastic, or you're a compost collector or and processor. But no one anywhere does them both."

[00:07:27] Ray: And then to my knowledge, they're still the only ones in the country that do 'em both. Maybe not, but it's a really unique thing. And so they bought them both. And so then two years ago, the guy calls me from down there. He was still there, the guy that I left it with. And he says, "Ray, this year the city council voted to go citywide, curbside." 

[00:07:45] Ray: And you know, you hit that another grand slam 'cause in in '14 I did a study for the city and in front of city council. I said, " Hey, you know, 80% wanna do this. And most of the ones that liked it have never done it." I asked them, you know, have you done it? Oh yeah, okay. No. No big deal with. No. And the ones that are brand new really got a kick out of it going, "This is like you should really listen up to this 'cause there's something there." Anyway, so that's how I got that started. Then I was gonna go on my bike ride on as a reward to sell the business. I got cancer.

[00:08:16] Adam: Oh no.

[00:08:17] Dominique: That'll change the bike plans.

[00:08:18] Ray: Yeah. And so, but in '16 I came out from that big valley as people do. And um, I decided, you know, I'm not done with this thing. I'm going to Columbus, I'm gonna move back home where I grew up and I'm gonna try this where there's a lot more people. See if it works. Now should I continue with the history?

[00:08:34] Adam: Yeah. I'm loving this. 

[00:08:36] Adam: What happened when you came to Columbus?

[00:08:38] Ray: Okay. So the idea was, I hadn't moved to Columbus. I'm still living in, and my sister live here in the west side. I said, "Judy, I'm gonna attempt to get the booth idea at the some of the farmer's markets myself 'cause I had seen it done in a similar way at the farmer's market in DC and Dupont Circle.

[00:08:57] Ray: Fabulous. Just fabulous market. Oh, I could just, like, I can remember.

[00:09:03] Dominique: I'm trying to decide if Ray likes farmer's markets, or compost more.

[00:09:06] Ray: I dunno. Anyway, so, I, uh, approached them. And then again, coincidence, meant to be, whatever. So Worthington at that time was run by Jamie Moore. 

[00:09:17] Ray: I explained, told her my story, and she automatically said, "We want you here." And I said, "How much?" "Free. We are doing this as a public service." I'm going dynamite. So, it took off. And I thought, "This is just fabulous." 

[00:09:32] Ray: So every May and June for a couple year, well, for the first year, yeah. We would have people walk up and they would ask me, and I didn't have my sign at the time. Eventually I got tired of having to explain it 20, 30, 40 times a day, especially when the season started. But we had 10, 15 new ones at a week, right? I did Worthington, I did Newark, and I did Granville. I came into town on Friday and I did Newark, which is brand new that year. And they have a fabulous facility that they built downtown for the market. Came back Saturday. I hired somebody to do Grandville and I did Worthington. And then I would take all that I collected, I'd go from Worthington to Grandville, and then I had Newark in my van already. 

[00:10:14] Ray: And I would travel back to Athens and I had a 80 foot long compost pile that I built for that whole year got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then the next year I decided, okay, got Worthington. Now I wanna set my site down to High Street, the High Street Corridor, Clintonville and North Market. And they both gave me a spot. And that's when it really started to take off down that corridor. 

[00:10:37] Adam: So at this time was the model that people were just bringing their compost to the farmer's market every week and dropping it off?

[00:10:43] Dominique: So no, no curbside yet?

[00:10:44] Ray: Nope.

[00:10:45] Adam: And seasonal at this time, right? 

[00:10:47] Ray: So what happened was, come September, the members would walk up with a really concerned look at 'em going, "Another one," and they would say, "Ray, what happens in three weeks when the market closes?" "We're staying." " By yourself? "Yeah," "All winter?" "Yeah. Deal with it." And they all stayed. They kept coming.

[00:11:06] Dominique: Oh, so they would just come to the same spot they found you at the farmer's market and it was just no market around you. 

[00:11:11] Ray: It's just us. 

[00:11:12] Dominique: And then how did that change engagement? How'd that change who came by?

[00:11:17] Ray: Oh, there was no traffic, no organic traffic, right? And it just us and the members. And it kept growing slowly during the off season. But that next year, took off again. 

[00:11:28] Ray: Mayor Ben Kessler, you know, Ben Kessler. Mayor Ben. He approached me to do a pilot for the city. So we did. 

[00:11:35] Ray: And um, we had 225 really excited people. And it lasted for a whole year, way longer than it needs to last for a pilot to figure out, "Do you like it or not?" Way too long. Anyway, but you know, cities need data. So we made a presentation and then February of '19, went citywide. Automatically it went from 225 to 850. 

[00:11:54] Adam: Wow.

[00:11:55] Ray: 

[00:11:55] Ray: And then '20, I hired an assistant, and then we just rolled out one neighborhood after another. The issue with collectors and pretty much standard from what I've seen, many of them make the mistake of trying to do too much when they launch their services. they are after low hanging fruit. 

[00:12:11] Ray: You go around the country right now, all the big cities. Google Nashville, or Houston, whatever, how much is curbside? And most of 'em are 25 to 40. We were charging, well, you could be on a team for 750 a month. And so the idea was you don't want to have just the folks who are into it. Do it, low hanging fruit. You want to have everybody, because then you can get past, "Well, that's what they do in Dublin" or " That's what they're like," " My friends aren't like that. I don't want my friends think I'm like that. Geez O' Pete!" Honest.

[00:12:44] Dominique: But how do you do that? I think you talk about composting and this habit adoption in such a positive way. And you talk about having such positive experiences with people from all walks of life, getting, every story you tell everyone sounds like, "Heck yeah, right. Let's do that." how do we do that? Because I know from my experience, not everybody comes into composting with positive thoughts. How do you do such a good job of getting everybody on board?

[00:13:10] Ray: I usually have a pretty simple answer to their concerns. For instance, if somebody says and walks up to a booth several times. You know, and they'll share with me their story of composting at home and I'll ask them right away. "What was your source of carbon?" They would answer, "What do you mean carbon?" Then I would say, "Well, here's how you do it at home." Now and again, it isn't a sales job at the booth. I'm always quick to tell folks who are interested in being a booth manager that this isn't a sales job, this is a relationship. You are building a relationship by your knowledge, by your passion, and by not trying to get them to sign up. That's their decision to make at their own time. This is kind of a personal thing, the step they're taking about saving the world or helping and doing their part. And not something that, "Oh yeah, it's gonna make me look better" or, you know, "Taste good, whatever." You know. 

[00:13:59] Ray: And sometimes I would have a recruit who would kind of, "Hey, take a brochure." And I would ask the person after the member or potential member would leave. And I would say, "This isn't what you need to do to be successful here. What you need to do is master the knowledge. So when they ask you, you have an answer for them. You can send them away. Until I sold the business, I was saying this to prospective booth managers. I would say, "The big mission is at a booth as a manager is to send them away so that when they get to home and they're carrying their bucket in their house and the neighbor go, "Hey Bob, I see you every week with that bucket. Tell me about it." Bob becomes our sales force. Simple idea. So how do you get that to happen? 

[00:14:41] Ray: You don't try to sell something, you don't, you're not on your phone. You are looking straight in your eye and you are sincere. How you doing Joe, or Bob or Sue, and that's what you want to have happen at booth. You want to have the booth manager become tight with every member so that the value in today's world where you have free dropoffs all over the city now, right? All the city's doing it. SWACO grants, and Columbus is doing it, right? How do you compete with that? Because that's, at some point you gotta compete. Well, there's a whole list of things that happen at at a TCE booth

[00:15:14] Ray: that don't happen by design at a free, no one's there booth or spot. And so that's what you focus on because you want them to find value. And one of those things is, "Hi Bob, how you been all week?" Or " How'd that trip go?" And that's what happens with the booth manager that becomes a really a good one that they're there every other week or three weeks in a row and then they're off for a week and then three more weeks. They kind of own the booth. That's what you want. So yeah. 

[00:15:40] Adam: I never thought about that as a relationship business.

[00:15:42] Ray: It's all about relationship.

[00:15:44] Dominique: It makes sense in the sense that you're really integrating into someone's life as a, as a habit. So they have to believe in it to be doing it.

[00:15:51] Ray: Let's go back, I mean, now we're getting into something more than just composting, but let's go back to the bean soup business. And the same thing happened there. We didn't have access to the folks who were the buyers at all these stores, hundreds of them. And I would say to somebody who was just starting as the marketing person in the office, not my assistant, all you have is your voice. Somebody answers the phone, "Hi, this is Sue from Purely American." And you know, it's a relationship. All you have is your voice. If you're really passionate about this business, they can feel it through the wires, baby. 

[00:16:24] Dominique: Do you think you're just naturally have this like innate relationship building quality to you or did you learn that in some part of your journey? 

[00:16:32] Ray: Oh, yeah. Long time ago. I was one of 11. 

[00:16:36] Ray: Yeah, and we lived up by OSU on 14th Avenue. That's where we moved first.

[00:16:41] Ray: Where were you in the 11? 

[00:16:42] Ray: The middle. 

[00:16:43] Adam: Oh wow. 

[00:16:44] Ray: I had two older brothers and they had paper routes and then my dad, you know, we were not well off at all. So my dad moved us by Ohio State and he never told any, he didn't tell me anyway, why he decided there versus a mile north, but right smack dab, butt up against the campus, right? And I thought, "He's a smart guy, my dad," and he was. I thought he probably knew what he was doing and he thought, "If I don't have the money to pay for it myself, if I move them close enough, maybe they'll just kind of all go to college. And we all did.

[00:17:16] Dominique: So when I was nine and a half, I mean, way back now, one day in the summer of 1960, yeah. He says to me, "It's your turn, Ray. Let's go get a paper route." So I did. Okay. It's just like, you know, it's a big, fun experience, I thought. And it turned out to be, you know, the best thing that ever happened to me. I learned those things that I'm talking about now. I learned them there. I had no fear. Didn't know what it was about 'cause I was too young to know fear. So I would knock on the students' doors and they would always have a new crop of students, right? No one's there. I felt it's like buffalo over the hill coming at you. I'm going, "They're coming."

[00:17:50] Adam: They're coming.

[00:17:53] Ray: And they came and so the contests, you know, they were at contests and that was the biggest thing, was to go out and try and get the most subscriptions.

[00:18:01] Adam: Oh, fantastic.

[00:18:02] Ray: But that's where I learned many of the things that I just kind of continued to understand that this works, 

[00:18:08] Dominique: So back to compost. And before we wrap up this first section, can you give us a brief, like Compost 101 for somebody who's brand new? Like what would they need to know about composting? 

[00:18:17] Ray: As a business? 

[00:18:18] Adam: No, as like a prospective person interested in composting.

[00:18:21] Ray: Most of it has to do with people have a misconception about how hard it can be and I would tell people, "Right now you're already doing it. You are just using the wrong container." Different path, landfill. Either your own pile and your own reward. Or you know, the big pile, but no negatives.

[00:18:40] Adam: What are some of the negatives?

[00:18:41] Ray: Oh. Well there's methane. Big negative to me is you can't use it again. It gets covered up. It just a one use thing. And just think of it, all the effort it took to grow those carrots. From the farmer and their employees and their expenses, the picking, the packing, the shipping, the receiving, the processing here, the shelf. You got in your car and you spent money to go to the store and you bought it, you brought it home, you washed it, you put it away. And it rotted or whatever to have it wind up in your hand going, "I can't use this now." One of my favorite things to ask or questions to ask is, how much do you think the average family of four throws away in dollar value every year? It's about 1600 bucks. Do the math, 30 bucks a week out the grocery store door into a trash can, just, "Cha-ching!"

[00:19:32] Adam: Well, and as soon as it goes into the trash, it's out of the cycle of life, right?

[00:19:37] Ray: if all you get from this is the knowledge that if I buy better, prep better, store better, use it up, and if the very end of it I compost instead, I've done my part. And all it takes as far as the last part is just change the direction of where you put this stuff and you've done your part, just that part of it, let alone not wasting because that's a major part, is the wasting. You know, that we throw away 30, 40% of what we grow in various stages of the process. Sure. That apple core, that banana peel, it's gonna get tossed somewhere.

[00:20:09] Adam: And if you can keep it from turning into methane in the landfill, it's a huge benefit for the planet.

[00:20:14] Ray: Well, here's the thing,think about this for a minute. Compost wasn't created until you decided to do it at home. It's not compost yet, or food scrap. It's just, you know, banana peel. But you're gonna go landfill, never see you again forever. No one will. Or we'll see you again in about six months in my whatever lettuce or whatever. And that kind of realization, "I have the power to do this. Wow." That is monumental, that feeling of power that I can just simply by changing the path I can change the world. And that's the truth.

[00:20:47] Adam: And so it came a long way. Yeah. We had 3,500 members at the very end when I sold it. And it's like, you know, that's just a

[00:20:53] Dominique: 3500 members? members 

[00:20:55] Adam: 3,500 members in Columbus. 

[00:20:56] Dominique: Do you have an idea of the impact, the amount of compost, pounds, tons?,

[00:21:01] Ray: Oh yeah. Yeah. A million two per year.

[00:21:04] Dominique: A million two 

[00:21:05] Ray: . Pounds. 

[00:21:06] Dominique: Pounds of compost diverted every year?

[00:21:08] Ray: Yeah. 500 tons. Right? Dig this. That's the amount that the landfill takes in every day.

[00:21:14] Dominique: How much you saved the community in a year 

[00:21:17] Ray: is one day's worth down there, right? And kicker is that for residential at least, which is a lot simpler than commercial. 90,000 tons goes down there every year. Okay? And that could all be done tomorrow.

[00:21:33] Adam: Wow.

[00:21:34] Ray: As long as you have a place to, to put it. That's the challenge. And we'll get into that. That's the next chapter.

[00:21:39] Dominique: Perfect. Queuing us up. Well, thank you, Ray. This was really, really interesting.

[00:21:43] Ray: Hearing how you built the Compost Exchange and how you've leaned into your relationship building skills and also just like focused on where you're adding value to people and [unintelligible] as many people just need to have in their lives. I really like the way that you frame sustainability solutions, is just the thing that makes sense to be doing. So thank you for sharing that and educating the two of us and our listeners.

[00:22:03] Adam: Yep. And I have to say, I joined Compost Exchange last year and I, there's something so satisfying about filling up your compost bin and seeing how much stuff it you're not putting into the trash is amazing how much it actually is.

[00:22:15] Ray: Well, that's the thing about the experience is that a lot of people had the same response after, you know, if they're brand new, "How you doing with it?" "Oh, my trash is like nothing now." And I didn't realize that we actually did that much. Those are two things that people realize 

[00:22:28] Dominique: I signed up my family, so my parents' house and then my sister as well. And I just signed them up and I was like, "Here, you have a subscription now." Um, 'cause they needed to be brought in. They were newer to 

[00:22:41] Dominique: the 

[00:22:41] Dominique: topic. And they were people who were like, "I don't have anything to go in there." and I was like, "Yes you do. Yes you do." And now my parents fill up their bucket, I think within like the first two days of the week. They do a lot of cooking. 

[00:22:56] Dominique: yeah. 

[00:22:57] Dominique: How can people connect with you or support the work that you're doing? 

[00:23:00] Ray: my email is rayleard@purelyamericanorganics.com. 

[00:23:05] Dominique: Awesome. And we'll add it at the show notes as well, Well thank you again for joining us. 

[00:23:09] Dominique: Next time we're gonna dive into the success that Ray has managed to have in the world of composting and waste diversion. As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career, or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:23:28] Adam: If you know a green champion that should be our next guest, email us at thegreenchampions@gmail.com. You can find our show notes at thegreenchampions.com. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode, diving further into the work that Ray is doing. 

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