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Marcus Nichols Finds Treasure in Trash
Rows and rows of composting material steam, making the air around this particular section of the White Street Landfill smell as sweet as a barn full of cured tobacco.
With a thermometer wedged deep into the compost pile in front of him, Marcus Nichols takes notes as he checks temperature readings.
While Nichols – who serves as the Solid Waste & Recycling Department’s landfill section supervisor at White Street – oversees the 1,000-acre facility, it’s the composting area that he feels the most pride for.
“We compost 50,000 tons of material a year – we compost all the leaves that the City picks up, all of the grass clippings, the yard waste, the garden waste, and we turn it into an environmentally rich material,” Nichols said. “It is magic what we do, and I’d confidently say that we have the best compost in the state of North Carolina.”
The pride that Nichols has for his job is something that he has carried his entire professional career, though it started when he was a kid growing up here in Greensboro.
HANDS ON
Nichols has always been an inherently curious individual, especially when it comes to fixing things – it was a discovery he made at his grandfather’s landscaping business.
“Naturally there’s always something broken, and I was intrigued by the fact that I am a fixer – I enjoy resolving problems and finding creative means to fix things,” Nichols said. “I assess an issue – like a broken piece of equipment – and I approach it as it’s just nuts and bolts. I don’t look at it and get overwhelmed that it could be a thousand different things.”
Between a grandfather who passed on so many decades of engineering wisdom, and a mind that found immense joy in making broken things work once more, Nichols attended Guilford Technical Community College after high school and got his associates in heavy equipment and transportation technology. From there, in 2014, he was set to start his career as a diesel mechanic for the City of Greensboro.
For the next seven-and-a-half years Nichols worked helping to keep the many machines the City uses operating at full efficiency. It was a fulfilling job for Nichols, and helped lead him to what he considers to be the coolest moment of his professional life.
In 2022, Nichols competed as a mechanic at the state-level Solid Waste Association of North America’s (SWANA) Road-E-O competition and won – sending him to the national competition in El Paso, Texas to face off against the best mechanics in the country.
At the competition Nichols was tasked with identifying a problem with a Caterpillar loader – all while being timed and judged on his process along the way. By the time everything was said and done, Nichols came out on top and took home the title.
“They look at efficiency and they look at steps taken – it’s a big grading process,” Nichols said. “That’s the top mechanic in SWANA for that year – it was a very cool moment.”
It was a big accomplishment for Nichols, and one he looks back at fondly now that he no longer does as much hands-on work these days. Ever a person in need of constant progress, Nichols left his role as a mechanic almost four years ago when he decided to take on his current role as landfill section supervisor.
CLEARING UP CONFUSION
There was a bit of a transition period for Nichols when he began overseeing the White Street Landfill – the first was learning to delegate work instead of going out there and doing it himself.
The transition time was only temporary, but there are plenty other challenges that comes with the job. One of which is debunking the often negative publicity that landfills get.
“Everybody has this idea of what they think a landfill should look like – it’s often dirty, it’s often covered in seagulls, and it’s a negative connotation of what a landfill is,” Nichols said. “When people come out here they’re like, ‘Wow, they have flower bed, and plants, and trees.’ It’s manicured, we edge the curbs, we mow the grass, and when we get lighter trash that blows away we get it picked up within an hour.”
Along with the cleanliness that Nichols prides himself in, another key issue comes from the misunderstandings of how the landfill actually operates, he said.
There’s a solid waste hierarchy that’s shaped like an inverted-pyramid – at the very top is source reduction, then recycling, then landfilling.
“Our last goal is to actually landfill it,” Nichols said. “If we can have a company that is bringing us a very repetitive waste that can be recycled, then great – we would love to help them have the resources to recycle that material. The goal is to, in an environmentally friendly way, deal with the waste, and then if there is no other option we landfill it.”
When the material is landfilled, it’s effectively quarantined and doesn’t pose a threat to the community or to groundwater. All the rainwater is processed and taken care of, and all of the gas that comes from the decaying process is also dealt with as well, Nichols said.
Then there’s the 10-acre composting area of the landfill – the prized possession for Nichols. The process is a long one, as material is ground into two-inch pieces before it is then put in windrows where the temperature is monitored for three days to kill seeds and pathogens. The entire curing process takes 8-10 months. After curing the product is run through a screening process to separate the finer particles for compost – it’s at that point the finished product is piled and ready for loading.
So not only is the material being recycled, but it’s also a source of revenue for the landfill, as the compost and mulch are sold by the truck load. There’s also a potential to land a big fish in the realm of compost, as a deal is being worked out to land Scotts Miracle-Gro as one of the City’s commercial buyers – something that would be a huge get, Nichols said.
With all of the services provided at White Street Landfill, Nichols knows that the work he does only makes up a small portion of what really gets done. A thousand acres is a lot of space, and the only way to take care of such a facility is through a collective team effort – one that Nichols gladly shares with his 20 employees.
“None of this would be successful if I was doing it by myself,” Nichols said. “I have a very good team and I’m very proud of what we have. I am the face of this, but I’m not the one actually doing it – I appreciate the compliments and this and that, but my team is the one who is helping me carry the weight. It’s not ‘me,’ it’s ‘we’ at this site.”