Josh Bartlome, 2019 Accomplished Under 40

Josh Bartlome

36 • CEO •

Southern Idaho Solid Waste • Twin Falls

Not many people would consider the landfill to be the ideal business setting, and initially Josh Bartlome was not an exception. That was until the environmental studies major saw its strong positive impact on people’s lives.

Bartlome was born in Twin Falls and grew up in Rupert, Idaho. There was something special about how interconnected the small town was that laid the foundation for his leadership beliefs.

“It’s because it’s such a small community,” he says. “Whatever you did, you were always with friends.”

Bartlome studied at Wenatchee Valley Community College and received a baseball scholarship from Washington State University. After graduating, Bartlome came back to Twin Falls where he built security gates and made a decent living. He took the position of Environmental Specialist for Southern Idaho Solid Waste (SISW) in 2006 at the Butte-Milner Landfill.

It didn’t take very long before Bartlome started to feel down in the dumps.

“The first couple weeks, I thought, ‘Man, what am I doing with my life? I’m a garbage man,’” he says. But his thoughts began to change when he saw the advanced forms of technology involved in waste processing.

“The solid waste and recycling community gets a bad rap, but once you get into the engineering and all the work involved to stop things like contamination, you start to respect it,” Bartlome says.

In 2011, Bartlome became the youngest CEO in the history of SISW at the age of 28. As multiple food manufacturing jobs entered the Twin Falls area, Bartlome took care of his workers by increasing and expanding benefits in 2013. Retention has been climbing ever since.

“If your employees feel like they’re worth something and they take pride in what they do, they’re really going to work hard for you,” Bartlome says.

Bartlome’s biggest project was completed in May 2018: converting landfill gas to usable energy. Landfill gas typically consists of 50% methane, 40% carbon dioxide and another 10% mixture of various gases. Under federal law, landfills are mandated to either use the gas for energy or burn it off. Gas emissions of waste peak at three years and slowly decline over the course of 60 years. The Milner-Butte landfill taps into this by using two Siemens locomotive engines that output three megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 2,500 homes.

Bartlome knew that funding for the project could be negotiated if Idaho Power initially borrowed the processing facility and incurred the debt of the private lending used to create it. In 15 years, SISW will buy back the operations for $10 and it will have generated more than $7 million in revenue.

“It’s actually the first county-level landfill to use the non-appropriations clause for this type of thing,” Bartlome says.

Bartlome’s perspective on his past 20 years shapes his views on what the future holds, both for the organization and the community.

“We’ve seen this technological revolution that’s scary but useful,” he says. “In the next 20 years, are we still going to be landfilling solid waste? We will, but probably 50% less than now.”