Talkin' Trash
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story from our November issue was written and edited before CleanScapes announced it was being acquired by San Francisco-based Recology for $66 million. CEO Chris Martin says the company will continue in Washington under the CleanScapes name and the management team will remain intact.
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While growing up in the leafy village of Millbrook, New York, in the Hudson River Valley 90 minutes from Manhattan, Chris Martin didn’t give a lot of thought to his future. If anything, he figured he’d end up in journalism like his father, a senior editor at Newsweek, and his mom, a former editor at The New York Times.
For sure, he didn’t imagine a role as the rising garbage magnate of Western Washington. But that’s pretty much what he is: His Seattle company, CleanScapes, recently signed with the city of Des Moines to serve as its municipal collector, adding to a portfolio that includes Shoreline and half of Seattle. And he’ll have pitched pitch CleanScapes to Issaquah, Tukwila, North Bend and Snoqualmie by the end of the year.
Martin, 44, doesn’t attribute his success to any burning entrepreneurial desire that lay hidden while he studied political science at Vassar. His venture into capitalism, he explains, was closer to a shrug than a leap. “It was more a factor of I didn’t have a whole lot of reasons not to,” he says.
At the time he started his business in 1997, he was single and childless. He has since married, produced boy and girl twins and moved to Roslyn.
“If it didn’t work, I could always get another job,” Martin says. “It was more the absence of restrictions. You’re sort of young, and it’s like, ‘I can do anything.’”
CleanScapes has grown to a $48 million-a-year operation with more than 250 employees. It has horned in on turf increasingly controlled by such industry giants as Waste Management Inc. and Republic Services Inc. (parent of Allied Waste).
CleanScapes shares the duty of Seattle collections with Waste Management, having displaced Allied, which lost out in the 2008 round of bidding for the city contract. A Republic Services spokeswoman says her company doesn’t see that outcome as part of a trend, noting that Republic recently landed municipal collection contracts for Kent and Monroe.
Seattle’s deal with CleanScapes runs for eight years at $35 million a year, with a city option to extend it up to 12 years, says Hans
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