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One Person's Grunge is another Person's Livelihood
Doug Knippel was looking at his compost a few years back and noticed a group of redworms crawling around in the dirt. That’s when he began to unearth his business plan.
Knippel’s Northwest Redworms, a company based in Camas, Wash., near Portland, Ore., is the “Grungiest” business of the year in the 2007 StartupNation Home-Based 100 rankings. As much as Knippel might not think he deserves the title, when one counts ratio of worms to compost as the key metric of his business, he’s got a good shot at winning this award. In fact, Knipple thinks he’s even more suited for the “Greenest” award since his enterprise is, in fact, environmentally friendly. But when you’re dealing with that much slime, dirt, and rotting foodstuffs, the HB 100 judges determined that “Grungiest” was the right category for this business.
Prior to launching his worm empire in 2005, Knippel made a living building cabinets in his brother’s employ since leaving the Air Force , which he also quit in 2005 after 17 years in service. He has also gotten his hands dirty and composted throughout his life, using biodegradable organic household waste such as vegetable scraps and other materials as nutrients for plant growing. Though the process is a smelly one, it is embraced by many environmentally-friendly communities because it’s a nutrient-rich way to grow plants and farm without using chemicals. It also takes advantage of useful materials that would be thrown out otherwise.
Author: Rich Sloan
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