Since its founding in 2017, Coastal 91˛Öżâ & Recycling has grown from a small operation into a regional solid waste and recycling company serving Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. A focus on people, safety, customer service, community engagement, and disciplined growth has shaped the company’s success—and its vision for the next decade.
Coastal 91˛Öżâ & Recycling was founded in August 2017 by Brendon Pantano and his partners at Summer Street Capitol, with a vision to fill a void in the southeastern market for a customer service focused, independent operator with the financial ability to participate and compete effectively in the highly capital intense solid waste industry.
Brendon represents the third generation in the industry, growing up in the business that was started by his grandfather and father. His father, Dennis Pantano, was recently inducted into the NWRA Hall of Fame. Brendon grew up understanding the business from every aspect and understands every detail onsite at the variety of facilities Coastal operates. Throughout his career, beside his private company experience, he has worked with private equity organizations, and public companies. Many of his early jobs were, working in the yards with the crew, putting stickers on trucks and containers, and it is where he set the expectation for what he wanted as a larger company. He grew his experience to include, executing on contracts, understanding code and regulation, and thinking about how he would build a company focused on people and grounded in simple core values everyone could live by. Coastal’s first acquisition was four to five trucks and a small transfer station with 16 employees. As they have scaled up, getting foundational blocks into place is essential.
Says Brendon, “Over the years, we needed to make sure that the business systems were set up for growth, as well as capital along with having the right people in place. From year one to year four, I transitioned to being an operator in the company to a leader. Now, a lot of my time is devoted to developing my own leadership skills and leading the organization to the next level.”
Coastal has experienced great success in qualifying for and securing exclusive residential franchise contracts throughout the Southeast Region—currently operating in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, with teams serving customers from 51 locations—further strengthening their position as an industry leader. They have also successfully transitioned contracted services for communities ranging from 850 to 124,000 residential homes. Residential collection services are secured through exclusive contract and residential subscription service.
“It’s been an adventure. As I think back on over nine years ago, when we first started the company, our original goal was to be in the tri-county area, and fill a gap between Miami-Dade County, Broward County, and Palm Beach County. As we progressed, we saw that we could replicate what we had done in Southeast Florida a little more broadly, but we had to think about the markets, look for high-growth areas, and open market opportunities—places where we can either acquire a very small company or start from the ground up, build out a sales team, and sell our services.”
With a current team of over 1,950, Coastal performs more than 1.5 million services weekly, serving a diverse customer base that includes residential, municipal, industrial, and commercial customers. They currently operate a fleet of over 1,000 and their team of sales professionals focuses on securing commercial services and industrial roll off services. Paying close attention to sustainability and environmental stewardship, Coastal has built and operates more than 20 material recycling facilities, processing construction and demolition materials, paper, single-stream mixed recyclables, metals, and aggregates. With extensive capabilities in both collection and post-collection services, operations include transfer stations, hauling and maintenance services, recycling and material recovery facilities, and a landfill.
Industry Challenges
Currently, Brendon points out that the biggest challenge is frontline drivers. “We need to let people know the opportunities that exist in being a driver in our industry. Some of the national trucking companies have done a great job with driving schools, but we all realize that there still is a gap, so we need to encourage people to take the next step and get their CDL permits. We also need to do a better job of educating the community on what jobs are available. In high school they tell you that you must go to college, but that’s not the case. There are great alternatives. We need to do a better job of communicating what that the trajectory can look like,” says Brendon. “One of the things that we try to focus on is what your real earning potential looks like. It is ultimately capped by the work you are willing to put in. I am a third generation garbageman. It has supported my family since the 1950s and I would like to think it can do the same for anybody.”
While staying in touch with the workforce gets more challenging every day, Brendon likes to make site visits to get a pulse on what is going on at a particular location. “I oftentimes don’t tell anyone that I am coming. I don’t want a scripted tour of the facility; I don’t want preparation. I get in my truck, drive to a site, check in, and start talking to frontline staff, sorters, drivers, supervisors, and operators. I am not focused on what the general management wants to tell me. I am more interested in the teams on the ground and how can we help them.”
Across all of their locations, Brendon emphasizes consistency in employee experience. Patti Hamilton, Vice President, Brand and Culture, leads a team that focuses on company culture, and people development. Knowing that integrating people into the company is an important process, Coastal runs consistent décor in the facilities across all locations—same floor, furniture, look—even down to the shops and the breakrooms, so if an employee decided to work at another one of their locations, it should look similar to where they worked before.
Coastal is proud to operate 25 recycling plants across their organization and pride themselves on inviting people to see what is going on in order to control the negative conversations about recycling not being real. “We have an open-door policy for visits to our recycling plants. I always encourage residents, businesses, and municipal staff to come and see what we do. The reality is that many things can be recycled; the question is: can it be done in an economically feasible way? There are municipalities and cities that want to pay to have it done correctly. The value of the material in the last couple of decades has changed and made it a difficult business model,” explains Brendon. “However, we have all gotten a lot smarter in the last five to seven years and emphasized that it does work. There are companies really pushing the envelope with technology and we just launched our first residential single-stream facility with the latest AI-enabled optical sorters and newest technologies that are making it better. The industry needs to do a better job with education. From our company standpoint, we prefer to open the doors and have people see it.”
A Shared Vision
From the start, Coastal has been focused on recruiting a team of experienced and progressive industry veterans who align with their shared vision of developing a fully integrated regional solid waste and recycling company unlike any other—putting people first and always keep the core values of Safety, Integrity, and Customer Service at the forefront of everything they do.
“When you are small, the ecosystem that handles the customers is small, so getting things resolved quickly is much easier. As you scale, you have drivers, dispatchers, supervisors, customer service, billing, and collections that all has to work really well at that scale. Operating 1,000+ trucks a day at 51 locations, we make mistakes and the key is not to make the same one twice. As hard as we try, it does happen and we don’t want to lose customers. At the end of the day, the driver is the one that is going to feel that daily and the last thing that they need to worry about is customer retention. I think that gets tested on a regular basis,” says Brendon.
Coastal prides itself on safety and integrity. Brendon points out that when you are a growth company, you are acquiring company cultures as well as people and customers, so expectations can be different across different companies. “When you are integrating these people into your organization, you need to send a consistent message for what is acceptable. We don’t want people cutting corners or doing something unsafe. As the integration happens, we use the opportunity to create new standards of what we will and won’t do. We are focused on our three core values: if you can’t do it safely, call your supervisor and communicate with the customer. We emphasize that if you have any problems, feel free to come to us and we will work through it.”
It is the behavior that drives safety, not rules and regulations. “The key behavior is complacency,” emphasizes Brendon, “I don’t think that anyone consciously intends to do something that is unsafe but there are countless distractions. You can have all the rules and programs that you want, but it comes down to engagement between leadership, our drivers, and the frontline team to make sure that we care regardless of the outcome. Keep safety about engagement and relationships. We want everyone back here safe.”
Engaging with the Community
Coastal wants to be known as good corporate citizens in the communities they serve. As a part of being a good neighbor, they make sure that their team is actively involved, viewing it as a touchpoint for engagement and to build relationships. Coastal’s commitment to recycling goes beyond just initiatives; it extends to collaborating with the communities served to develop effective programs that best fit the needs of the individual community. “Our goal is to partner with our customers in developing custom programs ensuring they are effective and produce results for their citizens. With a focus on recycling education, we provide a variety of programs throughout our service areas with an emphasis on intergenerational education,” says Pantano. From elementary school recycling education and high school scholarship programs to adult community recycling education, Coastal believes in providing facts and resources to the generators of waste are the key to success in reaching higher recycling percentages in each community.
Organizational programs that support the company culture at all locations are important to Coastal. These support both the team and the community at large. In fact, they pride themselves on closely collaborating to ensure that they are supporting the events and organizations that will benefit the community the most. Coastal works with each partner to ensure that the company is offering the greatest benefit to their organization or the community at large.
“We are proud to support and engage in the activities of the communities we serve,” says Pantano’ “In most cases these programs are developed by someone on our team. An example would be Operation Flag Rescue. What began as one supervisor, a U.S. military veteran, rescuing improperly discarded American Flags from his location in Pasco County, has become a company-wide program, where engaged team members rescue hundreds of flags annually. The flags are returned to veteran organizations to be disposed of properly or to the Boy Scouts to be used in educational programs, to ensure this important exercise is being taught to future generations. In addition, across all 51 locations every Friday, you will see a sea of R.E.D. Coastal shirts as our team wears R.E.D. to honor Remember Everyone Deployed.”
Coastal has a partnership with the nationally acclaimed 4Ocean cleanup efforts, which has resulted in thousands of pounds of plastic, metals and trash, being pulled from Florida waterways. In addition to the amazing work that the 4Ocean team does, worldwide, the team of Coastal volunteers work side-by-side with them locally on cleanup projects.
Taking it to the Next Level
For Coastal, it comes down to action. “Leadership must demonstrate those core values and get people to buy into it. If I don’t walk around a site with a hard hat and safety glasses, how do I expect my employees to follow the same procedures? Set the examples and reward the behavior. We need to make it okay for people to call us out and ensure it does not happen again. It is about having consistency at the leadership level, constantly reinforcing those values and holding them to accountability,” says Brendon.
By focusing on giving the next level of customer service, Brendon wants Coastal to be a place where people can grow their careers both personally and professionally. He points out that social media should be used as a tool to attract talent into the industry, where you can show them the company culture, the industry, and what it can do for their families. “You can’t discount the value and the culture of a team. You can be the strongest person in the room for a while, but it is not sustainable, not without investing in good people. When you bring people on, make sure it is a proper integration. Spend a lot of extra time with them upfront to make sure they understand the company and its culture.”
Coastal has a Manager in Training program, recruiting people right out of college. “We look for what kind of work they may have done through high school and college, to focus on the leadership potential and demonstrated strong work ethic. We will pay them as a real working supervisor from day one,” said Pantano. “Our thought is if we make the invest upfront, they can learn all different aspects of the job and get into a position a little faster (about 12 to 18 months). We want to show the value of creating relationships through that process. Currently, five to seven people per year go through the program and we are looking at growing it.”
He continues, “We continue to focus on planned and disciplined growth throughout the southeast region. As we approach our 10th anniversary, we are excited to plan that celebration and then launch into the next 10 years.” | WA
For more information, contact Pati Hamilton, Vice President, Brand and Culture, at [email protected] or visit .