May Member Spotlight: Lauren Clarke Never Lets a Good Problem Go to Waste
The following is an interview with Turn Founder Lauren Clarke, whose business has taken off in 2021 with a new composting contract with DFW Airport, which up until their new composting plan had contributed over 32,000 tons of waste annually to landfills. Turn is on a mission to help you rethink and reuse your urban environment, while supporting your local circular economy. Turn currently offers composting service for residential, restaurants, businesses and events in DFW.
Tell us the story behind why you started TURN compost?
I never aimed to be doing this, I sort of fell into it at an intersection of personal experiences and passions. I was a mom of two between jobs and just loving gardening and attending culinary school while trying to grow my family. I had been composting at home for a long time. I came across the scale of the problem of food waste, started researching how horrible it is, and also what an opportunity there was to do something about it. I don't have a professional background in waste management, science, or logistics. I like to think (well I tell myself anyway) that those deficits are to my advantage, because who better than a middle-aged woman/mother to take on a big dirty problem.
What has been your biggest lesson learned so far with this business?
It sounds cliche, but people are the most important part of a business. Having the right people on your team is everything. I'm a big believer in Jim Collins' bus analogy to creating and building a team.
If you had one piece of advice to someone starting a service-oriented business, what would it be?
Try and get as many insights from your target audience before you launch; and, build the business on those insights. Be ruthless in defining and continually refining every step of the customer experience. Ensure you have the right people on your team who will share your passion for excellence in service to your customers.
Where do you want your business to be in 5 years?
This is such a great question. In some ways, I am just still grateful to be doing this, because it has been a long, tough (and yes, dirty) journey with many obstacles in my path. And like many of us, my goal during the pandemic has been survival, and taking care of my people...I would love for Turn to be a model around the United States, serving more people in more areas, and for there to be further proliferation of our sustainability impact beyond food waste. The world is changing so rapidly. Humbly, I believe that we need to greatly accelerate our awareness and understanding of our consumer impact on the environment. It will take many organizations and lots of creative solutions to tackle the problems coming our way.
Photo by Ashlee Freese