Chris Young, Owner, Closing the Loop

“This idea behind sustainability and renewing our resources and being connected to food is very important. We started the company over a year and a half ago, and I just had a daughter a little over a month and a half ago, and all of a sudden these things are ten times more important. There are days when it’s not very glamorous picking up green waste. I kind of feel like a garbage man at times. I know it’s going to get bigger and it’s going to get better and we’re doing a good thing, but there are days you just don’t want to do it. But on a  basic level, doing it for her and for her future makes me want to do it. It’s kind of like something I said earlier, this planet is only finite. At some point we’re going to mine all of the lead out of it. We’re going to mine all of the silver. We’re going to mine all this, and we’re going to do the same thing with all the nutrients that are in the soil. If we keep growing food, all these calcium rich plants, kales and the broccolis and then the magnesium, and we turn around and just throw that into the dump and throw that into a landfill, it just becomes anaerobic. It becomes sludge and it turns into methane gas, into fossil fuel, so we can’t use it anyway. I guess it’s becoming even more important to me to make foods so she doesn’t have to deal with the issues that a lot of kids face. Even when she becomes an adult, I don’t want her to have to – I don’t want her to be living in some kind of post-apocalyptic future where it’s just a horrible place to be. Yeah. She’s really expanded my horizons a lot.”

“I guess the thing that I would say to everyone is that if you listen to Stephen Covey and all these leadership people and you’re talking about negotiations, the pie is infinite, right? There’s always enough pie so that way you can always have a win-win situation. When it comes to the planet, it is finite. It doesn’t keep going unless we help it keep going. There can be win-win situations with the planet, with our food, and with our children’s futures, but right now we’re in a win-lose situation. I would say for everyone to start looking for the win-win. I guess that’s the only way we’re going to make sure we all stay around.”