Quest Resources Trying to Grow its National Footprint

Quest Resource Holdings Corp., a Colony, Texas-based waste management company owns no trucks, landfills or processing plants, but instead handles waste through subcontractors. Its focus is on developing strategies for businesses to reduce waste.

The company provides businesses with management programs to reuse, recycle, and dispose of a wide variety of waste streams and recyclables with clients ranging from grocery stores and fleet companies to restaurants and manufacturers.

Quest, through its subsidiaries, Quest Resource Management Group and Earth911, designs and manages waste programs and delivers digital resources for content and data for reducing waste. With an emphasis on reuse, recycling and proper disposal management, the programs are designed for regional and national customers to have a single point of contact for managing a variety of waste streams and recyclables.

Quest also operates environmentally-based social media and online data platforms that contain information and instructions necessary to empower consumers and consumer product companies to recycle or properly dispose of household products and materials.

Most recently, Quest set its sights on the construction and demolition industry.

In January, Quest announced its new suite of construction site services handling C&D waste. Its new job site recycling and general requirement services combined with existing LEED project management and certification offerings provide a healthy program at each stage of the construction process.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce, private and public construction spending reached $1.18 billion for the first 11 months of 2016, the highest level since April 2006. The increase in spending on these construction sites, the company said, correlates with an increase in demand for project services, including site waste management.

 “We have received numerous requests for services in the construction and demolition marketplace,” Quest CEO Ray Hatch says. “As a solution provider, we saw the need for a more streamlined process for construction project managers juggling multiple vendors to manage a variety of waste streams and other services on each job site. We are confident that our solutions will free up a considerable amount of time for managers on the job site.”

The company says it is well positioned to capture a significant market share due to its national footprint experience, and cloud based service and reporting platform. Its new offerings are designed to enable clients to control cost, access waste disposal alternatives, streamline logistics and increase efficiencies both regionally and nationally.

“We help construction site managers and construction executives make impactful, data-based business decisions,” Hatch says.

The company provides a single source for job site and green building needs, and allows construction managers to focus on their building project goals, while Quest receives incoming requests, schedules and manages services, and provides LEED credit tracking and sustainability reporting.

Quest’s construction offerings include temporary offices, storage containers, toilets and hand washing stations, water tanks and dumpsters. C&D waste and recycling services include solutions for materials such as wood, concrete, roofing, drywall, metal, plastic and blast media recycling as well as hazardous and non-hazardous waste.

Last June, Quest’s subsidiary, Earth911.com, launched an enhanced recycling directory and a redesigned iRecycle App to make it easier for consumers to recycle materials.

The company also offers a recycling directory, found at Search.Earth911.com. The recently redesigned site has made the tool more intuitive to search, with an improved user interface and a better back-end experience for recycling location owners.

Food waste is another avenue the company has explored for growth. In addition to working with Walmart, in 2015, the company began work with natural and organic grocer Sprouts Farmers Market in California.

Sprouts was expanding its food waste diversion services, bringing a comprehensive organics-recycling program to all of its California stores. The goal was announced ahead of mandatory state commercial organics recycling regulations requiring the retailer to recycle food waste by Jan. 1, 2017.

With Quest the stores entered into a program that reduces food waste by diverting produce, dairy, bakery, bulk, deli and juice bar products that can't be sold or donated. It converts the waste into nutritional animal feed additives or compost, helping to prevent greenhouse gas emissions and reduce landfill waste. In addition to the solid waste and recycling programs for Sprouts’ stores, Quest developed custom online and in-store training to help educate and engage store associates to ensure the program’s success.

The idea is to help as many businesses with as many waste streams as possible to grow Quest’s business and reduce waste on a national scale.