Dirt Hugger Wins Nucor Steel Recycler of the Year Award

At the Washington State Recycling Association’s virtual annual conference this week, Dirt Hugger was pleased to accept the Recycler of the Year award. The nomination was due, in part, to the successful roll out and implementation of the City of Vancouver’s curbside food waste with yard debris composting program. The program provided over 17,000 tons of organic materials (over 680 semi-truck loads), which Dirt Hugger processed at their facility in Dallesport, WA. Dirt Hugger has turned the material into over 40,000 cubic yards of organic compost, which has been sold to local orchards, vineyards, farms, and gardens throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Accepting the award was co-founder & CEO Pierce Louis, who cited five major business changes in the past year. Highlights include:

• A recovered, reusable, and returnable bucket system for selling packaged compost product, which displaces plastic bagged compost
• Facility expansion and upgrades, including negative aeration with biofiltration
• New, end-to-end orchard & vineyard compost application services
• New orchard debris shredding services, which offsets orchard burning
• Six new team members, expanding the roster to 22 Dirt Hugger employees

Dirt Hugger cited their partnership with the City of Vancouver, Waste Connections, and Dietrich Trucking for creating a well-developed, well-run city-wide program. Louis said, "A properly designed program, with great outreach, and logistics are key to creating clean material and a sustainable program. This new program helps keep methane-generating food scraps out of the landfill and return their nutrients to the soil.”

Founded in 2010, Dirt Hugger produces 40k cubic yards of compost/year by recycling organic matter from food scraps, brush, brewery waste, culled fruit, and fish. Their compost is used by conventional and organic growers ( OMRI listed ). They distribute to farms in the Columbia River Gorge, Willamette Valley, and Tri-Cities regions.