Garbage Entrepreneurs Turn Food Waste into Businesses

Part-time waitress, full-time garbage entrepreneur — Melissa Tashjian has carved out a niche helping turn smelly food scraps into a dark, rich medium to grow more fruits and vegetables.

Two years ago, Tashjian started her little business, Compost Crusader LLC, with a small, slow-moving dump truck and a handful of customers.

Today, her client list of restaurants, schools and hospitals stands at 55 and is growing by the week. Her original truck, "Torty," has been traded in, replaced by two larger garbage trucks.

Last month, Tashjian's outfit picked up 115,000 pounds of food waste and other organic material — more than four times the weight she was handling in the summer of 2014.