Where there is waste – there is opportunity.

Real opportunity. This is not a talk about taking a can and turning it into a pencil holder. This is a talk about taking a can and turning it back into a can again. All kinds of metal – all kinds of opportunity.

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Woody Bigos shares his story of founding Simple Life Recycling with the simple idea of turning waste into opportunity. He takes manufacturers’ scrap metal that is saturated with used cutting fluid then mechanically separates the fluids from the metal chips and recycles both. Fluids are reused by the manufacturer at their original full potential, and the now-clean metal scraps are compressed into briquettes and go back to the mill to become solid metal again.

Bigos estimates that manufacturers throw away as much as 90 percent of their cutting fluids. This has been a problem for years and is unsustainable. Recycling them can reduce their fluid costs by 20 to 50 percent. Additionally, cleaner and higher-quality scrap metal fetches a higher price.

Woody credits his employees: “Success is about people. Who you do it with is far more important than what you do.”

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx