Climate CEOs: Scaling Startups Organic Waste Recycling: $200M Raised + Scaling Cities’ Compost Markets
Discover how Atlas Organics turns food & yard waste into profitable compost — leveraging public-private partnerships, strategic investors, & founder grit to scale nationwide.
My guest today is Joseph McMillin, Cofounder and CEO of Atlas Organics.
Atlas Organics is a national leader in organic waste recycling. Their key partner is Generate Capital, a multi-billion-dollar sustainable infrastructure investor.
Joseph is also a member of the Climate Mastermind peer groups we run at Entrepreneurs for Impact with three dozen growth-stage CEOs and investors tackling climate change.
In this episode, we talked about the following:
- His purchase of an old school bus, which he renovated and drove across the country during Covid, with his wife, young son, and four dogs (woah!)
- The importance of his earliest investors – such as Closed Loop and Gratitude Railroad – having confidence that he and his partner would land on the right business model to scale organic waste recycling
- Their evolution from collecting food waste in a truck to doing public-private partnerships to handle cities’ waste and buying existing organic waste processing facilities across the country
- How his projects earn revenue, and which revenue sources are contracted versus the spot market
- The role of city and state mandates and voluntary targets in driving greater organic waste recycling
- How their talent and operational processes have been influenced by books, such as Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm, as well as the interview practices described in topgrading
- His ideal morning routine of exercise, journaling, meditation, and reflection – if he’s able to get up at 4:45 am
- And lots more
Hope you enjoy.
And give Joseph a shout-out on LinkedIn, Slack, or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people.
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Entrepreneurs for Impact is on a mission to help climate innovators grow faster with new investment capital, share best practices among peers, expand their networks, and reach their full potential.
Our two offerings include:
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Programs are led by Dr. Chris Wedding — 4x founder, $1B of investment experience, and Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill professor, with 70,000+ professional students taught, 25 years of meditation, an obsession with constant improvement, and far too many mistakes to keep to himself.