Certified Compost Professional™ Spotlight: Geoffrey Starin CCP™

Geoffrey Starin is Co-Founder and Chief Programs Officer for Strata Sustainability. In his working life, he has never had a job outside of the solid waste and environmental sector.

After working at Seattle’s largest recycling center and solid waste transfer station through high-school and college, Geoffrey joined an upstart solid waste consulting firm in 1999 tasked with marketing and logistics management for Allied Waste North America’s Washington State facilities. With his partners, he helped to innovate, then permit, design and operate a first-of-its kind transload and disposal system for contaminated dredge spoils from marine Superfund cleanups. From 2001 through 2007, they were largely responsible for the secure transfer and disposal of over 2 million tons of contaminated sediment from Pacific Northwest waterways.

With his partner Tim Hodge, Geoffrey co-founded Strata to bring innovative and sustainable solid waste management infrastructure to emerging markets in The Caribbean and Latin America. Together they have remediated multiple open dumpsites and implemented diversion and modern, ISO 9001 and 14001-certified best management practices. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, they managed the design, construction and operation of a solid waste transfer and packaging facility that won the Solid Waste Association of North America’s 2013 Bronze Medal as the best transfer station in North America, and they completed the first commercial-scale composting project in the USVI to generate 30,000 tons of compost for use in a bioremediation project. They are currently managing the redevelopment of the Bahamas’ largest landfill, transforming it from a burning dumpsite to a modern "ecology park” with U.S. Subtitle D equivalent operating standards and large-scale diversion via new recycling and composting facilities.

For Strata, Geoffrey’s areas of focus are programmatic management, contract compliance, logistics and environmental compliance. He brings 25 years of hands-on experience to bear on both day-to-day operational challenges and overarching system design.