Innovation has paid off for AAA Wastewater Services of Franklin, Ohio. On the coattails of the portable restroom, septic tank and grease trap pumping company’s 60th anniversary, it recently earned the 2014 Soin Award for Innovation from the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. The award recognizes and honors a regional company that demonstrates the community’s entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to innovation. 

The Soin family has been the benefactor of this award since its inception in 2007. In this video announcement from the chamber, Raj Soin attributed small business success to persistence, creativity and an optimistic attitude. 

Gene DeHart, founder of AAA Wastewater Services, says in the video that he never imagined the success of the company when he bought it from his father-in-law.

“It just grew and grew,” he says. “And soon 60 years went by.”

Tim DeHart, Gene’s son and current president and owner of AAA, also describes how operating the small business has had a major impact on the community.

“We’ve really touched the lives of so many people and they don’t even realize it,” he says.

Since 1996, AAA has been developing a way to beneficially reuse sewage by turning it into a fertilizer, which earned the company the innovation award. In 2011, Tim officially renamed the company’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved on-site wastewater treatment plant as the Resource Recovery Center.

Currently, the company collects and processes 2.7 million gallons of septage and 360,000 gallons of grease trap waste annually.

“A lot of this wastewater is being put into landfills — 40 percent of wastewater sewage in southwest Ohio is either burned or placed into landfills,” Tim says.

“That doesn’t need to be happening. I find it very difficult to stomach putting all this organic material into landfills when there’s something we can do with it. We’ve been working on developing the sewage into a fertilizer. We’re looking at the nitrogen and the phosphorus and how we can use that with the farmers to develop a fertilizer that can be used proactively with the soils.”

AAA is also in the process of turning brown grease, a byproduct of the separation process from commercial grease trap cleaning, into biodiesel to sell as a valuable natural resource, which, according to the company, would make it the only company in the area to produce its own fuel.

According to AAA, it is the only company in the area to own a recycling plant for all of the non-hazardous liquid waste collected.

“That, with the evolution of our company from a small family-run company into a more professional company that’s focusing on the environment and looking at what we can do for the community and the environment is where the innovation is coming from,” Tim says.

Tim is proud that AAA is a sustainable company that enhances opportunities to help others in the septic pumping industry. “Winning the Soin award is a fantastic opportunity for our company,” he says. “We are so excited and thrilled to have this opportunity.”

The recognition also comes with a hefty cash reward — $25,000. “We will use the funds to reinforce our wastewater processing systems with the brown grease and sewage and help get us to the next level,” Tim says.

“Being green is not just about the environment. It’s also about saving money and looking at our resources and not being wasteful.”

Check out a full-length profile on AAA Wastewater featured in the February 2010 issue of Pumper: www.pumper.com/editorial/2010/02/come-together.