From Childhood Fascination to One-Stop Industrial Recycling Shop

The idea behind EZA Recycling Solutions – that what we throw away can be worth money – originated during a childhood trip to a recycling center.  Owner and founder Ezekiel Setne was nine when he first tagged along with his parents to return some of the family’s empty aluminum soda cans, and it wasn’t long before he was raking in $10/month by rounding up and bagging the cans himself.  Soon after, he expanded operations to handle the spare parts he had from working on cars with his father.  

At 16 Setne entered community college, using profits from fixing cars and recycling their spare parts to pay tuition.  When it became apparent that his current business wouldn’t cover the cost of attending a university he again looked to expand.  During regular conversations with his father (a Vibration Analyst at a sand and gravel quarry in Bridgeport, Texas) Setne had heard that rock mines would often have trouble getting rid of their waste materials.  Scrap conveyor belt, scrap poly pipe, and scrap metal would pile up in the boneyard and the maintenance supervisor would get stuck calling a handful of companies to clean it up.  Setne had been recycling metal for a decade now and had some experience with plastics, but rubber belting was far more difficult to handle -- the industry standard at the time was simply to pay contractors to take it to a landfill.  After several months of research and negotiation he worked out a way to actually buy conveyor belt, and using the profits he made from repairing a Honda S2000, he purchased his first truckload of mining waste.  A bit of paperwork later, EZA Recycling Solutions was born.  

Small shipments of belt, pipe, and metal began to add up, and EZA began to make a name for itself as a one-stop shop for plant managers and maintenance supervisors.  Setne finished school and ran the company himself with only a small team of contractors.  The next big step was working out the logistics of plant demolition such that he could pay mines to tear down their old structures and recycle the metal.  This new service drew attention from quarries that were accustomed to hiring contractors for the exact same projects, and Setne used it to build relationships with some of the largest mining companies in the world.  

Today, EZA Recycling Solutions still works with its original mining clients and has expanded to handle large-scale recycling projects in several other industries.  In addition to its core focus of conveyor belt, HDPE pipe, and metals, EZA now recycles a variety of waste materials that can be found in industrial quantities.