When the privately owned Dem-Con Companies, which services haulers and contractors throughout Minnesota, received SWANA’s Gold Award for excellence in recycling systems, it was due in part to the efforts of Ben Wetzell, waste services manager. Wetzell played a key role in the growth of the Dem-Con MRF growing into one of the largest of its kind in the state. The facility in 2013 opened a new 20-ton-per-hour residential and commercial single-stream recycling facility, aligning with Minnesota’s vision of increased recycling rates.
What He Does Day to Day
In his primary sales and marketing role for Dem-Con, Wetzell spends a great deal of time working with the company’s customers from its different business units such as Dem-Con Landfill, Dem-Con Recovery and Recycling (C&D MRF), and Dem-Con Shingle Processing. On any given day, he may be spending time profiling new wastes for acceptance, pricing new waste and recycling streams for the company’s customers, and visiting customers’ job sites to learn more about the materials his operation is, or may be, receiving from them. Wetzell also spends time at the Dem-Con MRF working on the company’s Green Grades education program, which teaches about single-stream recycling, how it works, and what should go in the recycling bin. When Dem-Con built its new 70,000-square-foot MRF, it included an education center.
In just a year and a half, more than 1,300 people have toured the facility. “I’m in charge of conducting the tours and marketing the programs we offer with it to area schools—the program targets kids in fourth through sixth grades,” says Wetzell. “I also handle our day-to-day marketing for all of Dem-Con’s business units, which may entail website development and maintenance, social media presence, and any advertising we may do.”
What Led Him Into This Line of Work
Wetzell earned a B.A. in finance and marketing from Bethel University in St. Paul, MN. From there he did a five-year stint with Cargill, where he held a marketing and trading position that brought him to the state of Washington. In 2012, he moved back to Minnesota to take his current position with Dem-Con. “Mark Pahl, one of Dem-Con’s owners, is my brother in-law and provided the relationship to get my foot in the door at Dem-Con,” says Wetzell. “I learned quickly that there are a lot of synergies between the agricultural sector and solid waste sector, particularly in logistics.”
What He Likes Best About His Work
“Working with the team at Dem-Con is amazing,” notes Wetzell. “We have a young, energetic team, and our owners—Jason Haus and Mark Pahl—are forward-thinking and push us to grow every day. Their vision is to serve our customers better and offer solutions to them that others may not be able to achieve. Dem-Con has developed one of the most integrated environmental campuses in the area, and it’s exciting to think about what the future holds as we grow with our customers. It makes the daily grind exciting knowing that we will continually look for ways to grow our business and service our customers better.”
His Biggest Challenge
Finding new markets for materials that are difficult to process and recycle, or are not currently being collected for recycling at all yet—particularly in the construction and demolition wastestream—is Wetzell’s biggest challenge. “As we continue to grow and evolve, new markets continually mature and emerge for different materials, but for materials such as drywall, windows, and even shingles still, it forces you to think outside the box to try to find alternative beneficial resources for these materials. We want to offer service to our customers that assures them we are processing and recycling as much as possible.”
The company recently certified its C&D MRF, becoming the first facility in the Midwest to be certified by the Recycling Certification Institute—also known as CORR, Certification of Real Rates. “CORR assures our customers that our recycling numbers are real, attainable, and verified by a third party,” points out Wetzell. “This certification also allows us to offer our customers an additional LEED point under LEED v4. We are excited to have this certification and offer for value and peace of mind to our customers.”