29. Charles Vigliotti
2012 Power List
When Hurricane Irene unleashed her fury on Long Island, power outages weren’t the only thing we had to contend with. Downed trees and other natural debris literally covered the Island but as quickly as it fell it was carried away. Much of it wound up in the hands of Charles Vigliotti’s Long Island Compost, which worked around the clock with LIPA’s work crews to accept Mother Nature’s rubble. Vigliotti makes a living turning organic matter into finished material that is bagged and sold back into the market. It’s not an easy or sexy process but it eliminates tons of material from the waste stream and reduces municipal overhead. Vigliotti and his brothers who co-own the company have demonstrated that composting is as scalable as it is necessary.