Ricky Blanding, August 23rd, 2022

Ricky Blanding, August 23rd, 2022

In this interview Ricky Blanding talks about history and his business Scrap Soils.

Detroit Historical Society

Detroit Historical Society

en-US

Ricky Blanding

Ricky Blanding is a part of the Hustle project and also runs his business Scrap Soils.

Billy Wall-Winkel

Detroit, MI

8/23/2022

47:26

Taylor Claybrook

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:00:00] That eight years is oral history work. Okay. So I started here as a front desk person. I started here as an intern before that. The front desk for a few months. Then I worked on the 67 Oral History Project, which I then after a few months, began running myself. I ran that through. I was in charge of that for two and a half, three years or so. We collected over 500 stories, told the Sun, the history of 67 and the City 67 uprising. And then I continue the oral history work with the Neighborhoods Project and now where we've done a few smaller projects here and there, but now we're working on the hustle.

Ricky Blanding [00:00:38] Okay. How do you feel about the Hustle project?

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:00:41] I've been enjoying it. It's it's not something we typically do. It's been a lot of, uh, I want to say it's relearning news, relearning old skills or something like that. But it, it was definitely a jump back into the pool from COVID. We like this type of community engagement. Work is not new to us. We did it during 67 like full bore, but we had that three year period of not doing anything with outside people, kind of like we were working on internal projects, we were working from home and now it's just been a big jump back in. But the response has been great. It's definitely making the the work fulfilling. Everyone's very happy, especially with the direction we're going in. Mm hmm. And the people who are being honored and it's this is right in my wheelhouse, because one of the things I enjoy most about my job is collecting artifacts from people, getting stories from people who don't expect that they'd be in a museum. Yeah, and that's how it seems. Most of the entrepreneurs we've been talking to feel like we've been working with plumbers. We worked with a guy who started a moving company with his friends. Yeah. And that guy started moving companies to support his rap career. Mm hmm. So we have. Here he is. Yeah, over here he is in a museum being honored for it. We have chefs who just wanted to, uh, make people happy with food, and they. They were in the kitchen, they're in the back, and now they're getting recognized for it.

Ricky Blanding [00:02:06] Well, thank you for doing this with me. And this is awesome.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:02:08] Yeah, it's my pleasure.

Ricky Blanding [00:02:09] Yeah, this is, like, beyond awesome.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:02:12] And I'm just happy we're doing this in person.

Ricky Blanding [00:02:14] Right, right. Like, I, I definitely. I was talking to the young woman at the front. What's her name?

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:02:20] Name? Lily. Lily.

Ricky Blanding [00:02:21] So Lily and I were talking, and it's hard to understand what this will mean outside of my world. You know, like, I'm doing this for boom and I'm business is going to keep going, but then, okay, business is going to keep going. But then when it comes to somebody else's experience of the exhibit or what they learn from the exhibit, and they see me here versus actually out in public that I think as a level of validity to the representation they feel regardless of what demographic they are in. And it showcases the it takes a snapshot of Detroit right now, you know, not just like in the entrepreneurial sense, but like Detroit as a whole. This is what the face looks like on the side that you weren't looking at, you know. So thank you all for reaching the way you did and to to get certain types of nominees from different communities. It is a it was interesting to be in that room.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:03:17] Good. I'm glad that there's the whole point. And like one thing I always bring up in the time of the hustle is. I we one of the things we wanted to do is we wanted to shatter the myth that Detroit is a blank, blank space. Mm hmm. And, like, we were all about myth busting. 27. We're, like, every every time we do an exhibit, we want to not only inform people, but we want to shatter something that they expected to. Expected to find restricted to learn. Right. Right. And whenever I sing with the hustle, I think about that, like Crain's 30 under 30 that came out maybe like five or six years ago now. And they were honoring all these people who are coming to the city to work and multiple people in the profile. So like Detroit is so great, everyone can come here, do whatever they want. It's a blank slate and it's not.

Ricky Blanding [00:04:01] I didn't know Cranes had a 30 under 30. I thought it was Forbes.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:04:05] Cranes doesn't do.

Ricky Blanding [00:04:06] Awesome. Okay, well, I guess I'll let you ask me a question, then. We'll go from there.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:04:12] Sounds good. Hello. My name is Billy. Wall- Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Hustle Project. Today is Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022. And we are sitting in Detroit, Michigan, and I'm sitting down with Ricky Blanding. Can you please spell your name for me?

Ricky Blanding. [00:04:30] Ricky is R-I-C-K-Y Blanding is B-L-A-N-D-I-N-G. That's the name I go by. But my, my full name is Richard Lawrence Blanding the third it's r i c h a r d l B l a n d i n g the third.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:04:49] Thank you so much. Congratulations again. Being honored.

Ricky Blanding. [00:04:52] Thank you.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:04:53] And. I want to. It seems like we're jumping really far ahead, but we're on the topic. How does it feel for you to be recognized like this for your work?

Ricky Blanding. [00:05:07] When when good things happen. When you're still in the process of working on something way beyond something that anybody can really see right now, it feels like gas in the tank is definitely not misaligned with the level of work my team has done. That sometimes does go a little unnoticed by certain members of our community. So to see this institution acknowledging us in this way feels like it's a big honor, but it also feels like you know, something that we I can't say deserved, but something that we were on our way to achieving at some point. You know, I definitely there was a little bit of imposter syndrome when I realized what was really going on like that there was a full out exhibit. But when I stepped back from my place in the exhibit and just looked at what a museum is in the first place and like me coming to the Detroit Historical Museum when I was a little boy. At some point, history has always been like history is happening every single second and somebody who doesn't usually go to museums, I think, okay, I'm going to go see, look back in time and experience history. But to look at a better picture of what's happening right now is also history. And I thought it was a really amazing thing that you all are honoring present history, if that makes any sense. And I'm beyond humbled and honored to be one of the 36 to be honored.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:06:39] Well, we're happy you're one of them, too.

Ricky Blanding. [00:06:41] Thank you.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:06:42] We're going to start with some baseline questions and then we're going to go from there. Okay. What is the name of your business?

Ricky Blanding. [00:06:48] Scrap Soils.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:06:49] Tell me about it.

Ricky Blanding. [00:06:51] Scrap Soils is a composting nonprofit, so we collect residential food waste and commercial food waste and we turn it into compost. We. Yeah, we the main purpose of our mission is to minimize greenhouse gases. And we really want to prioritize marginalized demographics within the Detroit area who are going to be impacted worst by climate change if it ever starts to get worse. So we want to just make sure that they are, seen, heard, taken care of and also that they feel like composting is for them. You know, composting is not just for people who I'll say this as best as I can.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:07:38] Go ahead.

Ricky Blanding. [00:07:39] Composting can sometimes be considered a white people thing, quote, unquote. And that's part of the reason why marginalized communities don't do it as much. It's also not exactly high on the priority list when there's other things to focus on, you know, like survival. So we also want to kind of change the narrative around that and just help it become more of a part of the community.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:08:04] When did you launch the business?

Ricky Blanding. [00:08:07] 2020, March 2020.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:08:10] That was a good time to do it.

Ricky Blanding. [00:08:11] You know, like, I still look back and I'm like, how are people, like, allowing us to come to their house and do this? But that goes to show how important minimizing food waste is.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:08:25] When did you get the idea to start this?

Ricky Blanding. [00:08:28] When I was working a lot of restaurant jobs I was serving. And while serving I just kind of. I was serving at the same time I got a garden and having that garden was a big, it was a way for me to get closer to my grandfather because he had passed and through having a bigger garden, I was creating more waste and I was just kind of wondering and I heard about composting at that time. And as soon as I heard that it could turn back into soil. I was like, wow, the soil in this garden is really hard to like get the clay out, make higher quality. So I'm like, I'm going to make my own soil. And it became this, I just started to see all the food waste around me. And then I went to work and I asked the head chef, I'm like, Hey, I want to collect all the waste, and they let me do that. And every restaurant job I had after that, I kind of made this agreement with the head chef that I was going to collect the waste every day. So I'd be taking trash bags full of waste in my trunk back home, totally obliterating the compost, it was not working right. And eventually I just kind of got better and at that time, I met with a friend of mine from high school who was, like, an amazing entrepreneur in his own right. And he at first it was like, Hey, I want to start a business and I want it to be around composting. Or it was really just I want to start a business, you know, and I was doing composting on my own. And at a certain point it just kind of like all fuzed together. And we did certain research together, we brought in another friend of ours and yeah, Scrap Soies was founded.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:10:14] And what year did you, did you start taking some of the waste?

Ricky Blanding. [00:10:18] So I started taking home the waste I want to say 2018. I had I have been doing waste collection for for some years before scrap sales was actually founded.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:10:29] So what was the reaction when you when the three of you started speaking with other people about this? So you want to start composting business? This is kind of your model. What was the reaction?

Ricky Blanding. [00:10:39] Their reaction was we honestly didn't talk about it so much. I think people's reaction more came when they saw me in meetings and they saw me like talking about certain things that I was doing that day. And they're like, What is that? And I had a lot of skepticism. It was a lot of, Well, what's the point or what's the end result like? What is the business for? And yeah, again, there's just that stigma around composting. They didn't really get it, but they were supportive in whatever way they could be. For this project that I was doing, they didn't get it.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:11:14] I'm laughing solely because that is basically what happened between my wife and I. My wife started a garden and she want to start composting and I had that exact reaction going. Is this? This seems like a lot of work. And I can just go buy soil.

Ricky Blanding. [00:11:30] Right. Like what;s the point?

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:11:31] Please explain this to me. Yes. And I have a compost thing in my backyard now. Yes. So how was it? What did you have to do to get over that either hesitation or confusion that you ran into.

Ricky Blanding. [00:11:47] Just keep working. I mean, people's reaction wasn't the reason we started the company. We were starting a company because we were genuinely excited about composting and working together and changing our little slice of the world. I, I think that this is probably totally tangent from the question you're asking me.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:12:11] Go ahead.

Ricky Blanding. [00:12:14] When we were starting to initiate this, it was a moment of I was finally able to get my ideas about how an operation could work out to people who knew how to implement those ideas and be willing to work with me on a certain level that made things more real. I learned at that time and even now that the best ideas kind of fall flat if you think that you're just going to carry it on your own and that's the end of it. You know, it's things take energy. And sometimes because we experience like a finite experience as human beings, we physically can't do everything. Like, we need each other and the times that I submit to that truth are the times that Scrap Soils moves forward quicker, better in more potent ways. So, yeah, Roshi and Liana, by the way, are my partners. And they I'm so grateful for them.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:13:11] Can you spell their names for me?

Ricky Blanding. [00:13:13] I will try, yes Roshi is. R-O-S-H-I. And Liana is L-I-A-N-A.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:13:25] What are the last names?

Ricky Blanding. [00:13:26] So Roshi Fu Roshi Fu spelled F-U and Liana Li Li spelled L-l. I hope there's time to correct that if we didn't get that correct.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:13:38] Oh, we can correct that, that's fine. Okay. Um, also after this, when I go to write these, but I can also Google it. Okay. Where did the name come from?

Ricky Blanding. [00:13:48] Funny story. So, we spent so we've spent so many different meetings trying to figure out what the name was going to be because we wanted it to be representative of the mission and representative of the community we were trying to impact. So I mean, many, many different name iterations. We did a lot of research around like other composting companies and people's reaction to certain words and we, after all of that, landed on smashed soils. Right. Because in my mind, I was going to create this grinder that would that would homogenize people's different waste and their different ideas about composting and just make one pretty much food pulp that I could divvy out and create a specific type of compost. So I was smashing the food waste so I figured I would smash soil. But as it sat on us, we just kind of like really it was like not working. And then we were establishing the nonprofit with the state the same day we were establishing that we were writing Smash Soils and all the documents. And I was like Scrap Soils. And me and Roshi were talking at the time doing the documents and he's like, Yeah, that totally works. And we're like, Yeah. And we just changed a name and boom! And then Liana found out and she's like, What the heck? But it, it worked. So Smash, Scrap Soils just kind of came literally out of out of nowhere.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:15:14] At the at the right time.

Ricky Blanding. [00:15:15] At the exact right time. We were writing the documents that day.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:15:20] So walk me through your plan. So how did you expect this business to roll out? How did you expect to get the scraps? And who are you going to. That kind of stuff.

Ricky Blanding. [00:15:30] We went into this, we always say, quote unquote, backwards. Normally, you do a lot of market research and research and development and then you create like the most sustainable, safe way forward to take one step forward. We said, now's the time, we're just going to do this. And we expected to get members to start servicing and make sure that we we're able to we're able to properly service those members. And we didn't really have an idea of the direction of that. We just figured we would discover that as we went on. But we knew that the main mission is to decrease food waste, and we knew that we could do that well. That kind of took a turn when we realized that there was so much space for the work that we were doing in Detroit. Food waste collection on a residential level was not being pursued by many companies. There was only a few that were really doing it. And commercial collection is is doing the same mission, but is in a different way accessing a different demographic. Residential food waste is among the highest producer of food waste. But somehow companies aren't really touching that side of the the problem. So now our service is looking like residential members residential interactions and really getting down to where is the most food waste coming from and how do we, how do we collect the most food waste without wearing out the resources that we have to do so. How do we utilize the composting instruction infrastructure in Michigan that's already set up? How do we support that infrastructure to continue to minimize food waste production?

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:17:31] And what are you are you targeting the city of Detroit or are you targeting neighborhoods in the city of Detroit?

Ricky Blanding. [00:17:37] We're targeting, I would say, Detroit as a whole. There's certain neighborhoods that are going to be more negatively impacted by food excuse me, more negatively impacted by climate change as as the years goes on. And if we don't turn a corner. But we're definitely we understand that below eight mile is different than above eight mile. And we want to.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:18:01] So when you say all of Detroit, you mean all of Metro Detroit.

Ricky Blanding. [00:18:05] No, all of all of Detroit. All of Detroit itself are are service radius doesn't span across all of Detroit. But even though our service radius even goes into metro Detroit, into Oakland County, outside by minimizing food waste or excuse me, by minimizing greenhouse gas, we're impacting the marginalized communities within areas like.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:18:27] Oh, gotcha. Okay, so I just misunderstood that. So where are you located?

Ricky Blanding. [00:18:33] We are located in Artist Village. And I the exact address escapes me right now. I think it's 21566 or Orchard street. Yeah, our fiduciary company's call it blockbusters, which is like an amazing company. I've known John George for my whole life and when he found out the work that we were doing and that we needed a fiduciary to move forward he he was down for it. We actually started at a at a place called Prospectors for Life. They're up there near Palmer Park. Loretta Osby, who has now passed, was the first person to let us use property and actually start composting. So, it's is really sad that she didn't get to see this part of things but she was a business partner of my mom's and just somebody who was so in support of the community. It's kind of amazing to see somebody just dedicate their whole life to making sure that their block has what they need. So yeah.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:19:49] So what is a, I'm sorry, that was wrong. So do you primarily find yourselves focusing in on the old Redford neighborhood and the Greater West Side because of your because of where you're headquartered?

Ricky Blanding. [00:20:05] We focus on the old Redford neighborhood in certain ways, but we focus on our service radius. And just to confirm, right now, currently we have suspended service to focus on fundraising and moving forward and making sure that our are the foundation of our company has what it needs to be sustainable in the future. But yeah, like by being in over effort, there's certain types of connections that we're naturally making and certain types that we're really pursuing, like good relationships with our neighbors. As our compost grows, so does the risk of, like, smells and, like, a bad day and like, just a little bit of extra rain and little factors that really change, you know. They really increased the possibility of like, that that line being crossed between like this is a residential space versus this an industrial operation. And so far, I think BlockBusters connection to the community has helped us to make a better connection to them because we are we're on the same soil, if that makes any sense.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:21:12] Yes. Yeah. This is a granular question, but because of my wife I know to ask it. When you were collecting, when you were actively collecting. We'll come back to that in a second.

Ricky Blanding. [00:21:25] Okay.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:21:28] How much education do you have to do with people when you are collecting food waste from them from especially from home? My assumption would be that you told them not to put meat in the things they were giving you. Yeah.

Ricky Blanding. [00:21:39] So we started off with just rather than telling them what didn't go in the bin. It was this is what does go in the bin. So we said food waste. We said if it if it has ever lived, then it usually can go in the bin. Just make sure you're not putting salts or fats or like oils in the bin and we don't collect meat. Right. So that started that way. But as I started to collect all of the the things that I didn't realize, I didn't mention ended up in the in the buckets. And so I had to say no plastic and I had to say no citrus and those types of things. So at our scale, things like meats and citrus and milk are not composted because there is not enough mass. There's not enough capacity or mass, rather, to achieve the proper temperature for a long enough time to break those materials down. But so that means that things like citrus, they kill the healthy bacteria that do the work. So it's best for us not to process as many lemons as I thought we could.

Ricky Blanding. [00:22:48] I didn't know the citrus part. Yeah, because that would be because you mentioned that you wanted to be proper neighbors, so you didn't want to have a bad smell on a hot day.

Ricky Blanding. [00:22:56] Mm hmm.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:22:57] Now, the thing with the meat. That was one thing my wife drilled into me, like, don't you put meat in this thing. Yeah, I was like, You got it.

Ricky Blanding. [00:23:02] Don't do it.

Ricky Blanding. [00:23:03] Don't put it in the box on the counter. Don't put it in the one outside. And, was that was that a lengthy process or did you find people pick it up rather quickly?

Ricky Blanding. [00:23:18] People, it's a lengthy process, honestly, some people picked it up quickly. Others, just kind of didn't care, and I think they trusted that Scrap Soils was going to figure it out, you know, which honestly, I'd rather that than them throwing their food waste away altogether. So we figured it out. You know, I made sure that the lemons and the limes and the citrus kind of like went on certain parts of the pile. You know, you try to make it work. But yeah, it was really helpful to have certain members who did prioritize, like how they put their food waste in there and and so forth. Moving forward, we're looking forward to not having as many limits on what we can include in our bins and just kind of collecting in general, even table scraps we'd like to start collecting one day. But for now we have a good communication with our member base.

Ricky Blanding. [00:24:11] And what was it like for you to suspend active service in favor of making sure the fundamentals, as you said, were strong?

Ricky Blanding. [00:24:18] They had to twist my arm. They had to scientifically tell me why this was the right choice, because I'm I'm the type this like somewhere deep inside. I still think I can save the world. Like, I still think I can do that. And I know that is not true, but, like, I think my body's getting used to that not being true, you know? And. So I was like. Quite honestly, I had just went through a really difficult personal time and it wasn't just like. I mean, it was so difficult to where I had to, like, leave work. And I was off of work for, like years. Right. And that along with our challenges around the amount of manpower that we had to service our radius it stopped us from being able to do it to the capacity that we could to the capacity that we are growing to. And they let me know, like, hey, if we stop this right now, it doesn't mean that we can't start it back up. It just means that what we do is going to be more sustainable. So, when I when I looked at it that way, I'm like, do I want to run this into the ground or do I want to help it grow and let it go through its phases, you know, its seasons.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:25:34] Mhm.

Ricky Blanding. [00:25:34] So yeah. But yeah it was once the choice was made, it made so much sense and it opened our resources up to work with the University of Michigan, work with other institutions that do composting in the area and that's when we started to get connected to organics in Michigan outside of Scrap Soils. So stopping service is one of the best things that have happened to us so far.

Ricky Blanding. [00:26:00] And what is the timeline for resuming it?

Ricky Blanding. [00:26:03] We're looking to resume in spring of 2023.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:26:05] Gotcha. Is it still just primarily the three of you working on this or have you expanded?

Ricky Blanding. [00:26:13] We have recently onboarded our, we've recently onboarded a new member. She's admin, she's our administrative manager. Her name is Grace Tate. Grace is spelled g r a c e tate spelled t a t e. I need a pencil and pen in front of pencil and paper in front of me asking me to spell out like this. But. Yeah. So she just became a part of our team. And she's going to be, we've worked with her from the University of Michigan. And yeah, she's going to do really great work.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:26:50] And how did it feel for you hiring? I'm assuming this is your first person outside the three founders.

Ricky Blanding. [00:26:57] So, no, there's no there's been members of the board that have come and gone or, you know, we still have an advisory board of two or three people, you know, that circulate. And we have a chief marketing officer, Sierra Soleimani. I don't know how to spell it.

Ricky Blanding. [00:27:15] No worries.

Ricky Blanding. [00:27:17] But Sierra started with us when we were like right at the beginning and did a lot of our messaging and copywriting and helped helped us to develope our brand and marketing.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:27:32] So who were so you mentioned the University of Michigan. So who are some of the other people that you've reached out to during this during this time? During this, expand, like I won't tell interregnum, I guess, but this this time.

Ricky Blanding. [00:27:48] Service pause.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:27:48] Service pause. We'll go with that.

Ricky Blanding. [00:27:50] With that.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:27:52] Completely lost the word.

Ricky Blanding. [00:27:55] So stopped July 2021 for service. I immediately hit the ground with just trying to meet people. I was like, Who's out there? What's going on? I, I actually so I talked to someone in my building who is just like a great guy we talk to actually about ceramics. I also do ceramics and he found out that I do Scrap Soils and I was asking him about entrepreneurial resources. I was actually looking for a ceramic studio at the time and he connected me with businesses in the area that were all about social entrepreneurship and trying to add equity to Detroit. And after meeting with those businesses on the ceramics front, I realized that they had resources for like capstone projects that could be beneficial to Scrap Soils. And I kind of like transitioned the initiatives from ceramics to Scrap Soils, met with a couple of faculty members at that University of Michigan, and we applied to the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business Capstone Map project and when we actually got that, that was like, oh, my gosh, we get to do research and development. We get to put some ideas to rest and figure out which ones to invest in and understand what we do well and what we don't do well and what we need. It was just like we needed that at that time. And at that same time, I was also in contact with Marcus Harris, Dr. Marcus Harris from University of Michigan, Dearborn, who was doing a social entrepreneurship class excuse me, social enterprise class. It was kind of like a cohort where you get a group with students and they help you to achieve a certain list of deliverables. Both of those programs happened at the same time. And it was it was exactly what I needed. I needed to go to school, quote unquote, for Scrap Soils. And I did that and coming out of that we not only established a better relationship with these universities and the areas that they were in, but Grace came from that social enterprise class. And, you know, now she wants to work with us, and she will.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:30:16] That's awesome.

Ricky Blanding. [00:30:17] Thank you. And so to add Green Task Force with Michelle Jackson, she's someone else that we reached out to at the time. She does a lot of work in the community with gardening and composting. Joining that task force has put us in front of people like Renee Wallace of Food Plus Detroit, also not only in composting, but also food rescue. So helping food before it can hit the trash. You know, she does that work as well as she's she will be starting a compost operation. Also got in touch with John over at over at Sanctuary Farms. Sanctuary Farms is a farm, but they also do composting to an extent. And, you know, just started having site visits brought in Aaron, today from the from Eagle of Michigan. I mean, the list goes on.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:31:16] Have you done any work with, like, make food not waste?

Ricky Blanding. [00:31:20] I'm sorry.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:31:20] Make food, not waste.

Ricky Blanding. [00:31:21] No.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:31:22] It's not food recovery.

Ricky Blanding. [00:31:24] Not yet.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:31:25] So my main thought so far when I'm going through this is, What has been, has there been any emphasis on home composting or is it just purely collection from your from for you guys?

Ricky Blanding. [00:31:42] So far? No. We're we're going to we're moving into ways to home compost. For example, we have a farm and composting event coming up on September 10th with hope for flowers there right in the right in midtown or excuse me, not Midtown, North End. And we're just encouraging people, hey, Scrap Soils isn't in service but here's something that you can do in your own home in just adding to a bean that does the composting for you. We will be releasing certain types of programing that teaches people how to compost on their own if they don't want to join our service.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:32:23] And. Did you, so is this like an initiative on your own or have you seen like an uptick in people interested in home composting?

Ricky Blanding. [00:32:35] That's a that's a really good question. I don't think I can really answer that. I don't think I can answer that from I guess, from the time that we were in service rarely did any of our members ask us how to get to compost on their own. I wouldn't doubt that some of them even did, you know, to an extent. But they wanted to support this. Some of our members were gung ho about composting and wanted to learn more, and that's why they joined. Others knew in the back of their mind that it was important, but they would rather not deal with it. They wanted us to do it so.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:33:15] So what are your hopes? And so you mentioned like you've mentioned it a few times, we've glanced off of it, but when you when you resume service in spring 2023 or let's say you will in 2023, what will be different about the service you provide then than it was when you provided service before?

Ricky Blanding. [00:33:36] We will have a driver, we will have a five bay system on site and we will have a volunteer program and more more administrative presence for Scrap Soils to focus manpower in certain areas. So before, you know, I started doing the service route, the logistics, the actual composting, all, all of that. Then my partner Lianna jumped onto it with me and so we were tag teaming, all of it. And when you're doing that, plus being a board, plus trying to make pivotal choices about the company, that is that equals burnout, you know, it's not sustainable. So we've identified that not having a driver and not having a truck and not having a completely streamlined method of composting on site all contributed to the lack of sustainability. So we expect to be able to quadruple our 30, 30 members within our seven zip codes within the first year after we return to service.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:34:44] And for the people who don't know. What do you mean by five bay?

Ricky Blanding. [00:34:50] Five bay. So like it is normally called three bay system. If you think of like, just. I don't want to say a section, but it's a bay. You know, it's a if you think of a cube and then you take off the top in the front face of that cube. That's what a bay is. And normally on a smaller scale, there's three of them lined up. A certain amount of food waste and woodchips or carbonous material goes into that first bay and after a certain amount of time, all of that material is taken out and transferred to the second, where it breaks down a little bit more and is transferred to the third. Because the scale that we're at, we it is better for us to have five of those bays and we're going to be cycling the material through. And each bay represents a different stage in the compost life from the initial whole food waste all the way down to the curing process where the compost is ready to be tested, packaged and either donated, sold or delivered.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:35:50] That leads me into my next question is, what do you plan on doing with the soil that you create? Are you going to be selling it back to your to your members or you sell at farmers markets?

Ricky Blanding. [00:35:59] Yes. So we will be creating a product out of Scrap Soils. So it's going to be soils amended soils, compost, and fertilizers. In conjunction with what's being sold we're also going to be donating a certain amount back to the community. We plan to kind of split up actual compost operations. So like some of it happens on our headquarters and in other parts of that, composting happens right on the farms in the community, like they're doing the composting, the people are coming to them and we're operating that way. And we're also going to be we want to grandfather our members into a certain package. Like if you're a member, you're already paying for a service we want you to have if not free it like ridiculously discounted you know rate for the compost that you get.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:36:51] And then you said you expect to double your. Your 30 members within the first year.

Ricky Blanding. [00:36:59] Quadruple.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:36:59] Oh, quadruple. Yes. All right.

Ricky Blanding. [00:37:01] Within the first year.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:37:02] What will what will be your capacity like? So you hope to quadruple it, what can't, what would you be capable of doing?

Ricky Blanding. [00:37:09] So we'd be able to I don't want to I don't want to blast off into like.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:37:14] No one's going to marry you to this.

Ricky Blanding. [00:37:15] Yeah. Yeah.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:37:16] I'm just wondering.

Ricky Blanding. [00:37:17] Yeah. So, what is that? So that would be.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:37:22] 120.

Ricky Blanding. [00:37:24] Around 120 residential members and at least four commercial members. And that's that's the conservative estimate.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:37:32] Mm hmm.

Ricky Blanding. [00:37:33] We know that. But that also quadruples our actual impact. So instead of 52,000 gallons of food waste, it would be that times four. Same goes for the methane emission reduction and greenhouse gas emission reduction. Yeah. Like we're really going to be able to make an impact in not only for the composting we do on site, but our connection to the urban farms that are in the area, that have, you know, people showing up and dedicated to organics in some way we get to connect with and support them in the work that they do as well. Increasing the potency of the vegetable, the soil that feeds the vegetables. So we start to aid in food security as well. Another big initiative of Scrap Soils is to change the climate around farming practices. So we don't only want to connect with urban farms, we want to connect with industrial farms on an industrial level, which is people tell me I'm crazy for it all the time, but there, they have a really big part to play in desertification of our soil. You know, they're really pumping out CO2 with some of these farming practices and I'm not insensitive to the fact that they live a different life than me, but there's something that must be done about what's happening there, whether it's legislation to make their jobs easier. We got to incentivize. But Scrap Soils is knocking on that door as well. We really want to minimize greenhouse gas.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:39:17] Where do you see Scrap Soils fitting into the new into I can only guess would be a new. Not new, a more competitive environment. So you mentioned someone else earlier starting in compost. You mentioned other urban farms composting already. Do you see it as a competition or many people working just for the same thing.

Ricky Blanding. [00:39:42] Many people working for the same thing. And it has to be that way. If. The nature of business is competitive, unfortunately, but the nature of partnership is partnered, right? And by us being a business, there's going to be some level of each of those, but we're oriented towards Detroit being a massive, massive city and Michigan producing a massive amount of food waste. There's so much space for different companies to occupy different aspects of food, waste collection and processing that there's no reason for us to need to exclude certain types of partnership or encourage the growth of other composting operations. We want to work with them. We want to support them, and we want to understand how to do this work because. Us supporting another compost operation is only us doing our mission better. It's only giving what we do the type of foundation that keeps us in this for a longer period of time. You know, it really is about minimizing food waste. How can we do that?

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:41:06] Is there anything about Scrap Soils beginning or operation that you wanted to chat about with me or tell me that I didn't ask you about?

Ricky Blanding. [00:41:21] I mean, there's the sentimental stuff, you know, like my my family, when they heard that I was going to be doing this interview, they wanted me not to exclude the the reality of, like, where I've been in my life and. How important it is to acknowledge that when you're talking about entrepreneurship in Detroit, you know, or among the other 36 entrepreneurs being honored here. Sometimes people lose a lot and they go through a lot. And they, that kind of cooks their passion for something and it allows it to go to the to the levels that Scrap Soils has gone just so far. So rather than get too deep off into that, I just want to encourage people to remember that your identity was not burned by what you went through. It was crystallized into something more clear and more potent and more suited for the future that you will live the better future for yourself. We have to remember that our brains are our plastic. They can move and change and shift and trauma is not. You don't have to. It's not something that we have to let completely change everything about us is something that we can move past, is something that we can learn to live with. And once you believe in your ability to do that, you'd be surprised at what you can do.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:43:00] Oh, great. Thank you. I just have a couple quick wrap up questions and then we're all good to go.

Ricky Blanding. [00:43:07] Okay.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:43:08] When you think of the word hustle, what was what comes to mind?

Ricky Blanding. [00:43:13] When I think of hustle I think of you wake up in the morning and you say, I'm not having this. I refuse to live a life of lack and you just go. And you don't stop until, it's not even that you stop until you're tired, it's like you just go. And you say yes to things. And you use discernment when you need to But you keep going. And you allow life to happen to you. You kill your pride every single day. When pride stands up in your face, you just kill it as best you can. And you go to sleep, and you ask yourself, did I did I put myself out there today? Did I live today? That's what that's what hustling has felt like for me. It's honestly what has it has saved my life, you know, and when I meet other people who hustle in any kind of way, I really respect that because there's no sometimes there's zero validation. You run in you run through the gantlet sometimes. And for somebody to keep on going they really are looking at something, whether internally or externally. There's something that they're going for, and to be that hyper focused on an aspect of your life is really commendable.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:44:41] That was great. When you think of the word hustler. What comes to mind?

Ricky Blanding. [00:44:46] That plus just somebody who kind of lives in their own world a little bit, you know, somebody who's kind of disassociated attach from certain schemas about what a good life looks like today. You know, I think of a hustler as just somebody who has like an internal energy about themselves and their pursuits are different because what they want is different. You know, they want something a little bit more specific or even more broad than what the modern idea of success can give them, you know?

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:45:24] Mm hmm.

Ricky Blanding. [00:45:26] Definitely. Definitely. I want to say a humble person, but that's just one type of hustler. There's like all types of hustlers. Not all hustlers are people that I will hang out with, but.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:45:38] Yeah. When, I didn't ask you this during the interview but is Scraps Soils like, you're your primary focus right now or do you have another job?

Ricky Blanding. [00:45:49] So Ricky Blanding Ceramics is my other focus.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:45:51] Okay.

Ricky Blanding. [00:45:53] I have a, you know, a ceramics LLC and I, it's a small batch pottery. And I'm also taking commissions, so potentially working on my first wholesale order. Taking commissions for, like, interior design businesses and just trying to really figure out what types of products I can can sustainably offer overtime.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:46:20] Which one do you see as your side hustle?

Ricky Blanding. [00:46:24] That's such a good question. That's such a good question. Obviously, Scrap Soils is is primary to me because I know that if if things really got really, really bad as far as like climate change. I know that there's something that I can reach over and grab and do something about that. And that is way more valuable than making somebody something that's really beautiful. The type of beauty that Ricky Blanding Ceramics can give it reverberates to starting a conversation and making connections with people. But that is not, to me, as immediately valuable as minimizing food waste. So a certain capacity of my energy will always be redirected to Scrap Soils because that's the important work right now. I need to make a living. But I also Scraps Soils needs to grow. It needs to.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:47:21] All right. Thank you so much. This is great.

Ricky Blanding. [00:47:23] Thank you. This was great. It's nice to meet you.

Billy Wall-Winkel [00:47:25] Great to meet you, too.