Northern Marianas
Trash To Cash
Local Entrepreneur Turns Garbage Into Big Business
Over three generations, the Cruz family of Saipan has quietly built an empire out of trash. From modest beginnings – patriarch Jacinto Cruz started the part-time business in the late 1960s picking up commercial trash– the family enterprise today grosses nearly $1 million a year with 47 full-time employees.
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| Eric Cruz, above left has transformed the small family trash business, Ericco Enterprises, into Saipan’s major private trash collection and recycling company. [photo: Jacqueline Hernandez] |
“It was a very tough life,” remembers Eric Cruz of the days when his parents, two brothers and four sisters worked late into the night. “We struggled to earn a decent living.” The 39-year-old Cruz, who took over the company shortly after graduating from high school in 1986, has transformed the business into Saipan’s major private trash collection and recycling company.
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The focus on recycling started five years ago in the face of growing competition from other commercial trash collection companies. Ericco and Maeda Pacific, a Guam-based construction company, merged five years ago to go into construction and heavy equipment rental. But due to a decline in major construction projects, they formed a partnership called “Basula Produkto,” which literally means trash products. It sells its recycled products to Japan, China, India, South Korea and Taiwan.
They timed the move well. The company started just as planning was being completed for a new Saipan landfill, which was built to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. The project is considered one of the most environmentally sensitive landfills in the Pacific. It is a major improvement over the previous Saipan dump, which was literally a mountain of trash sitting next to the island’s only commercial dock.
The new Marpi Landfill has an expected lifespan of 25 years. Cruz says that it could be much shorter if the commonwealth does not segregate recyclable materials from the trash stream. The landfill is now under the control of the commonwealth’s Dept. of Public Works, which took over from a private contractor.
“Public Works needs to enforce the regulations that were being followed when a private contractor was operating the landfill,” Cruz says. He believes the landfill’s employees are more concerned about protecting their jobs than the environment.
On an island of approximately 45 square miles, the issues of trash collection and recycling are everyday concerns. While it is his core business, Cruz says recycling is one of the best ways to ensure that the beauty of Pacific Islands isn’t spoiled. He urges consumers to begin the process at home, which will also reduce their monthly trash disposal fees, he says.
He has a word of caution, however: “Do not put hope in your government to recycle wastes. You can do it at home. That’s my message to the people of the Northern Marianas and throughout the Pacific.”
Building his business has taken its toll on Cruz. Twenty years ago, after taking over the small business from his father, Cruz had to have his wife, Bernice, accompany him on his trash pickup route to convince her it was a real business and he wasn’t out “doing drugs.” She threw her support behind her husband, and today also works at Ericco.
Cruz became central to the business shortly after he graduated from Marianas High School in 1986. He heard his parents discussing plans to send him to the U.S. for college, something that they did for all of his brothers and sisters. Cruz had other ideas.
“So I went to them and told them I have two hands. Should I go abroad and go to college or use my two hands to expand the business? My parents gave me their blessings to manage the business,” he says. When he took over the business, the company was doing $800 a month. Within a year, Cruz expanded from residential into commercial trash collection, and the business quadrupled.
On an island where most companies hire mostly alien labor, 80 percent of Cruz’s full-time employees are local. The remaining 20 percent are contract workers representing seven different nationalities.
While Ericco provides Cruz and his family with a good life, he says his biggest satisfaction is helping to protect Saipan’s environment. That passion, and his business success, is behind the many awards Cruz has won over the years.
The most prestigious, however, was awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in April 2006 to Basula Produkto. The EPA award recognized the company’s three-year effort in assisting cleaning up the environment through recycling. Cruz and Maeda Pacific president Thomas Nielsen flew to San Francisco to accept the award, which he proudly displays at his office. According to U.S. EPA Region 9, Basula Produkto processed and shipped off-island 1,119 tons of cardboard and paper, 188 tons of aluminum and 513 tons of scrap metal. That’s 1,820 tons of waste that didn’t end up in the Marpi Landfill.
