Art Kazarian
In the 1940s, at the age of six, Art Kazarian entered the family recycling business rolling over-issue newsprint for sale to flower shops. By the 1960s, he was collecting and selling fiber to paper mills and by the 1980s, he had built wastepaper recycling operations in California, Texas, Hawaii, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, and Georgia. Art developed the first privately-owned transfer station in Orange County, California in 1982 and later, on a handshake and cocktail napkin, developed a transfer station in Downtown Los Angeles with Waste Management, Inc. He formed a joint venture, Mottra Corp., with Tom Blackman, Jr. in the early 1990s and expanded ownership to waste collection, disposal, and recycling facilities, including organics recycling facilities, C & D diversion operation, electronics recycling business, and medical waste management company.