Dean C. Richardson
Dean comes from a military family upbringing which included duty stations across the United States and in Europe. He attended high school in both Great Britain and the United States, spent a year at Valley Forge Military Junior College, and completed his education at the University of Miami where he majored in biology. His professional career began as a marine biologist at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences where he started out as a field technician and worked his way up to senior field party chief in charge of the project he was working on. He continued his career in applied esturine ecology when he transferred to the biology department at the main campus at the University of Miami where he was the senior field party chief responsible for the largest staff in the biology department, three research boats, and two fully staffed campus research laboratories.
After leaving UM, Dean began his horticulture career by becoming the head grower of the largest foliage nursery in Florida. Over the next 12 years he ran several of the most prestigious foliage nurseries in Florida, and sat on the board of directors of several industry trade associations. In one such position he developed a project in conjunction with NASA that demonstrated the ability of indoor plants to remove air pollution from an interior space such as an office.
In 1988 he was recruited by a startup company called Agripost that had a unique composting process that composted the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (garbage) also known as MSW. As the marketing representative, using his extensive knowledge of the agricultural industry of South Florida, he successfully introduced this new compost product into the marketplace. He later went on to be the sales manager at Reuter Recycling, at that time the world's largest composting/recycling facility. Their process recycled 80% of the incoming MSW waste stream, separating out recyclables, organics, and non-recyclables, and composting the organic fraction. He designed and set up the largest compost research project ever attempted in Florida. Monitored by a graduate student from the University of Florida, compost was spread in a scientifically devised random pattern of different application rates over 1200 acres of crops ranging from vegetables to fruit trees. The graduate student closely monitored all of the vegetable crops for a period of two years cataloguing the results in her doctoral thesis. In many crops the harvest was nearly double the normal harvest, and for several crops, the cull rate was substantially reduced increasing the overall harvest. This groundbreaking research project definitively proved the value of compost for large-scale commercial agricultural production. During this two-year period Dean successfully distributed over 300,000 yd. of finished compost.
From the mid-1990's through the mid-2000's, Dean returned to the horticulture industry to grow his business, a wholesale landscape supply tree farm called Tropical Treescapes. In 2008 he rejoined Colonel Ed West to develop another groundbreaking compost project at the Broken Sound Club in Boca Raton, Florida. With the help of his partners at the company that they formed (Environmentally Controlled Waste or ECW ), Dean designed a project utilizing two different composting technologies (an in-vessel digester and compost covers) with the goal of combining all of the food waste generated at the club's four kitchens with green waste coming out of the golf courses. The project was successfully built and began preliminary operations in January 2011, producing a Class A compost that can be successfully applied to the golf course after only a four-week composting/curing process. The grand opening for the project was held on April 30, 2011, and since that time has been operated successfully by the club's own personnel. The results on the golf course have exceeded expectations. It is expected that the cost savings in reduced landfill charges, and reduced fertilizer requirements for the golf courses, will pay for the project in three to five years. ECW is currently actively pursuing other institutions that can benefit from projects similar to the one designed for the Broken Sound Club.
Dean comes from a military family upbringing which included duty stations across the United States and in Europe. He attended high school in both Great Britain and the United States, spent a year at Valley Forge Military Junior College, and completed his education at the University of Miami where he majored in biology. His professional career began as a marine biologist at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences where he started out as a field technician and worked his way up to senior field party chief in charge of the project he was working on. He continued his career in applied esturine ecology when he transferred to the biology department at the main campus at the University of Miami where he was the senior field party chief responsible for the largest staff in the biology department, three research boats, and two fully staffed campus research laboratories.
After leaving UM, Dean began his horticulture career by becoming the head grower of the largest foliage nursery in Florida. Over the next 12 years he ran several of the most prestigious foliage nurseries in Florida, and sat on the board of directors of several industry trade associations. In one such position he developed a project in conjunction with NASA that demonstrated the ability of indoor plants to remove air pollution from an interior space such as an office.
In 1988 he was recruited by a startup company called Agripost that had a unique composting process that composted the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (garbage) also known as MSW. As the marketing representative, using his extensive knowledge of the agricultural industry of South Florida, he successfully introduced this new compost product into the marketplace. He later went on to be the sales manager at Reuter Recycling, at that time the world's largest composting/recycling facility. Their process recycled 80% of the incoming MSW waste stream, separating out recyclables, organics, and non-recyclables, and composting the organic fraction. He designed and set up the largest compost research project ever attempted in Florida. Monitored by a graduate student from the University of Florida, compost was spread in a scientifically devised random pattern of different application rates over 1200 acres of crops ranging from vegetables to fruit trees. The graduate student closely monitored all of the vegetable crops for a period of two years cataloguing the results in her doctoral thesis. In many crops the harvest was nearly double the normal harvest, and for several crops, the cull rate was substantially reduced increasing the overall harvest. This groundbreaking research project definitively proved the value of compost for large-scale commercial agricultural production. During this two-year period Dean successfully distributed over 300,000 yd. of finished compost.
From the mid-1990's through the mid-2000's, Dean returned to the horticulture industry to grow his business, a wholesale landscape supply tree farm called Tropical Treescapes. In 2008 he rejoined Colonel Ed West to develop another groundbreaking compost project at the Broken Sound Club in Boca Raton, Florida. With the help of his partners at the company that they formed (Environmentally Controlled Waste or ECW ), Dean designed a project utilizing two different composting technologies (an in-vessel digester and compost covers) with the goal of combining all of the food waste generated at the club's four kitchens with green waste coming out of the golf courses. The project was successfully built and began preliminary operations in January 2011, producing a Class A compost that can be successfully applied to the golf course after only a four-week composting/curing process. The grand opening for the project was held on April 30, 2011, and since that time has been operated successfully by the club's own personnel. The results on the golf course have exceeded expectations. It is expected that the cost savings in reduced landfill charges, and reduced fertilizer requirements for the golf courses, will pay for the project in three to five years. ECW is currently actively pursuing other institutions that can benefit from projects similar to the one designed for the Broken Sound Club.