Fresh Perspective

Mauricio Castelan

General manager at Balcones Resources

When the 2008 recession hit, Mauricio Castelan had recently graduated from high school in Austin, Texas, and worked part-time at a local restaurant. The restaurant began to reduce its staffing in response to the economic crisis, and Castelan says he decided to look for a more stable job.

At that time, Castelan’s father worked at Balcones Resources as a supervisor for its material recovery facility (MRF) on the east side of Austin, where the company is headquartered, and suggested his son join him there that summer while he figured out his next career move.

But what started as a summer job for Castelan turned into a 15-year career in MRF operations. During his first few years with Balcones, Castelan says his father taught him how to run all the equipment, including forklifts, box trucks and balers.

Balcones invested $25 million to open a MRF in Austin in 2012, and with that addition, Castelan was trained to become the new MRF supervisor.

“Balcones was really looking for that next person to take a management role and be able to train other operators, and I fit into that,” he says. “I saw I could make a career out of this; I can become an operations expert. I wasn’t planning on it being a career, but [Balcones] really gave me an opportunity and helped me build some knowledge and put it to good use.”

Castelan took on various leadership positions since the facility’s opening and today serves as the MRF’s general manager. In the following interview, he shares more about what he’s learned from his leadership role.

”I saw I could make a career out of this; I can become an operations expert.”

Recycling Today (RT): Who helped train you to be a supervisor and eventually general manager at Balcones?

Mauricio Castelan (MC): When I came on board, my dad was my supervisor and trainer. ... I really had a thirst and wanted to learn everything, so I became like a sponge.

One great mentor [was Balcones Chief Commercial Officer] Joaquin Mariel ... Also, [Vice President of Operations] Mike Melby was another great mentor of mine. They trained me up, showing me how to have patience, how to treat people and how to take those next steps to keep growing in the company.

RT: What are some challenges you have had to work through since becoming general manager?

MC: One of the greatest challenges I’ve had was my first year. We had a fire—it was a pretty terrible fire. It started in our pile. We had a little bit of a backlog from Christmas, and in February, we were still working through the backlog along with a terrible spell of heavy turnover—we were really low on staff. We think a battery fire started it. It was never confirmed, but most of the fires are battery-related or [caused by] some type of electronics.

On the other side of that fire, we have processes now that could help us prevent that. We’d dealt with fires before, but we definitely tightened up our process a lot more [after that one]. Our safety culture shifted drastically to prevent fires. We partnered with Fire Rover to help us prevent this in the future. We have a lot of monitoring [of] our piles now … all year round. We invested a lot more into managing our volume, so, every Monday, we’re keeping floors clean. That improved a lot in our facility.

RT: What are some exciting projects happening at Balcones?

MC: We have a San Antonio [MRF] that should be up and running by April of next year. It’s going to be a state-of-the-art MRF, a little bit larger than the one I’m in right now. We also have another [MRF] opening later this year in Phoenix, so, we’re growing and we’re trying to continue to grow.