Ezekiel Setne: The Business Nobody Else Wanted, and the Power of a Niche

What we talked about.

In this episode of the Sunny Ray Show, host Sunny Ray talks with Ezekiel of EZA Recycling Solutions about building a company around materials most people overlook. Ezekiel traces his interest in recycling to age eight or nine, when he watched his father sell scrap metal at a recycling yard. He explains how friends in the mining industry revealed an untapped opportunity in cleaning up mine equipment, how he won large mining clients, and how his company helped create the conveyor belt recycling market. He shares candid lessons, including treating the work as a real business, moving past handshake deals to proper invoicing, and surviving the 2018 collapse of the recycling market, which forced layoffs of 90% of his workforce. He also discusses why plastic recycling remains broken, how ADHD hyperfocus fueled his obsession with the company, and why leaning into a niche, teaching clients to handle more in house while EZA provides logistics, shaped its recovery. He closes on second-life uses for industrial waste streams.

Ezekiel Setne turned mine site junk into a thriving niche business, survived a market collapse, and learned why being the pioneer pays.

The questions, and the answers.

How did you get into the recycling business?

When I was eight or nine, I watched my father take what I thought was trash to a recycling yard, hand it to a guy, and get paid. I never forgot it. It made me wonder what was stopping people from doing that on a grand scale.

Why did you go after the mining industry, and why did nobody else want it?

Metal recycling is very saturated, so I wanted something others weren't chasing. Friends in mining told me old equipment just rotted in fields. I realized I could pay operators a share of proceeds, hire contractors, and clean it up while the mine was operating. The math worked for everyone.

What did you see that others missed?

Most people assumed it was out of their ballpark, since it meant renting heavy equipment, hiring contractors, and cutting metal on site. I treated it like a real business, got insured as a general contractor welder, worked with contractors already cleared for the sites, and made them offers that worked.

Who were your first big customers, and how did you win them?

Our first large customers were five of the largest publicly traded mining companies on the S&P 500. After a pilot at a quarry near Bridgeport, Texas, I pitched a regional vice president of procurement. He gave me junkyard trucks to recycle as a test, I bought and recycled them, and we won a contract covering Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

What is a problem in recycling that outsiders rarely see?

Plastic recycling is the broken part. Every other piece of recycling works. Plastic can technically be recycled, but every step creates microplastics, and that is becoming an existential issue. Many people, myself included, have largely stepped away from dedicated plastic recycling unless the benefit outweighs the risk.

What did you get wrong early on?

I didn't treat my business like a business. We did handshake deals and didn't send proper invoices or keep a paper trail, so deals fell through. I went back for my MBA, redid our systems about a decade ago, and we no longer get burned on unpaid invoices.

What was your toughest setback?

In 2018, China cut off imports of foreign recycling overnight, and the market collapsed. Our mining contracts became unserviceable right as we had scaled to about 40 people. We survived thanks to our domestic relationships, but I had to lay off 90% of our workforce and change our business model.

What decision changed the business, and where is the biggest opportunity now?

I decided to do less and get much better, leaning into our niche. We began teaching clients to prepare their own material while we provide bins, trucks and buyer contracts as the logistics provider. Going forward, I see the biggest opportunity in second-life uses for other industrial waste streams.