The ‘Commodore of Recycling’ helps his family business grow
Northeastern University grad helps lead a business that built machines that handle 70 tons an hour of New York City’s recycling, as well as for plants across the nation, Mexico and Canada
There’s no stopping the seemingly endless stream of old bottles, cans, cardboard, newspaper and plastics that float in on barges from Manhattan to a massive recycling plant along the Upper New York Bay. The refuse gets scooped up by massive claws at the plant’s loading docks into machines that can process 70 tons of rubbish per hour. As the machines run, more rubbish is trucked in from Queens and Brooklyn.
But what if something goes wrong with a gear or motor in those warehouse-sized recycling machines? It turns out Northeastern University alumnus Maarten Eenkema Van Dijk and his team are on call to help fix it pronto.
“You just can’t tell New York City that their garbage won’t get picked up,” said Eenkema van Dijk, 35, the man called the “commodore of recycling” by his family, business associates, and old friends from Northeastern University.
The recycling machines are also designed and built by his family’s Norwalk, Conn.-based company, VAN DYK Recycling Solutions, Founded in 1984 in the U.S. by his father and uncle – Dutch brothers Pieter and Erik Eenkema van Dijk, Maarteen Eenkema van Dijk started working at the company in 2017 as an operations manager. He rose up the ranks at the plant and is now the executive vice president at the company.
The kind of large-scale recycling that the company handles was once done by people sorting the refuse with rakes and shoves, Eenkema van Dijk says. “Now it’s all machines,” he said. The machines are equipped with, among other things, infra-red optical sensors that can tell one type of plastic from another.
Eenkema van Dijk, who graduated from Northeastern with a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in 2014 and a master’s degree in structural engineering in 2015, credits his success to skills he learned during his Northeastern co-ops.
Those co-ops included working on waste-water systems in New York City, another designing luxury villas on Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean and a third as a structural engineer at the Hudson Yards, a $32 billion commercial and housing development in Manhattan. Across the three experiences, he honed his engineering skills and also learned the ins and outs of managing workers and following projects from start to finish.
“Northeastern, to me, was learning a way of thinking, how to problem solve,” he said.
During his Hudson Yards co-op he worked for the structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti P.E., he left a lasting impression, said managing principal for the company, Eli Gottleib.
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“I remember him as someone who seemed ready to succeed,” Gottlieb said, adding that Eenkema van Dijk did design work and material testing on a moving glass and high-test plastic building that is used as an arts and institution now at Hudson Yards.
It’s called “The Shed” and features a telescoping outer shell that rolls on tracks to accommodate large-scale indoor and open-air performances, Gottlieb explained.
“He really dug in, asked the right questions and learned what he didn’t understand,” he added.
One of his instructors at Northeastern, Jerome Hajjar, the interim dean at Northeastern University’s College of Engineering, remarked on similar attributes, remembering Eenkema van Dijk for his eagerness to learn.
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He was in the college’s Gordon Institute of Engineering and Leadership, a program launched in 2007 that helps students step into leadership roles in the industry.
“I liked the way he worked, liked to think,” Hajjar said. “He was so inquisitive. He was always asking about what books he should read…I’m not surprised he’s doing so well.”
Eenkemma van Dijk said school and the co-ops helped him learn the skills to help lead the company that builds and services countless machines of all sizes in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The value of those experiences has also meant that his recycling company now hosts at least three co-ops, usually mechanical and industrial engineering students, from Northeastern every year.
Eenkema van Dijk also cites his time captaining the university’s sailing team as being where he learned leadership skills.
“The sailing team made me who I am today,” he said of the team he led for Northeastern and led in many competitions. His family has also made several sizable donations to the sailing team, giving it the funds to retain a coach for years to come. “It really brought me out of my shell. It taught me leadership skills and gave me the confidence to help build up the team,” Eenkema van Dijk said.
From those days, when he spent up to 30 hours a week on the water, he earned the nickname “commodore” and today he helps lead a work team that he built up from about 50 people in 2017 to 135 employees.
These days, the “commodore” still gets on the water in a small dinghy sailboat whenever he can, but work is never far from his mind.
“Cities depend on us,” he said. “Our machines have to work.”
