By PAMELA DEY VOSSLER, Photos by BAMBI RIEGEL | riegelpictureworks.com
Yvette and Pieter at VDRS in Norwalk
If you know long-time Darien residents Pieter and Yvette Eenkema van Dijk from their volunteer work in town, you are well acquainted with how passionately they support the things they care about. If you know them through their kids – Maarten (32), Lonneke (29) and Florian (26), you’ll know how they feel about family.
If you know them from the Noroton Yacht Club, you’ll know they know their blue water, competently, confidently. If you’ve shared a meal with them, you’ll know what it feels like to be so welcomed you feel like family, even if you’ve just met them.
If you’ve spent any time with them at all, you will know they are Dutch, gezellig …and if you’ve watched the third season of Ted Lasso, you’ve grappled with the meaning of this strange word. It’s Dutch and there is no direct English translation for it. But if you know the Eenkema van Dijks, you know exactly what it means.
It’s that lift that comes from integrity, authenticity, loyalty, humility, trust and generosity (of spirit as much as anything). Gezellig is respect for all, no judgment. It is family, a hard job tackled, in-the-moment fun, good people, good conversation, easy air shared.
The family is the business and the business is the family: Maarten, Pieter and Florian entering VDRS
And somehow, Pieter, along with his younger brother Erik (with a big assist from Yvette—Lonneke too when she was younger) and now Maarten and Florian, have found a way to infuse it into a family business that has done more than just about anyone to propel the recycling industry forward in the U.S. over the past 40 years.
Because what you may not know about the Eenkema van Dijks is that they, with Erik, are the founders and owners of Van Dyk Recycling Solutions (VDRS), the largest supplier of recycling systems in North America.
“Today all the recyclables of most big cities in North America are processed through our equipment,” said Pieter, who serves as the CEO of VDRS. Erik is the chief operating officer.
VDRS systems send countless tons of trash daily (including every bottle and can recycled in the five boroughs of NYC) along conveyor belts through wheel-shaped “screens” edged with wave-like fins, optical sorters, and other devices able to separate paper from plastic from glass from metals and more. The machines then separate these into finer subsets of their base material turning filthy trash into hope for the planet and profit for those who know how to find a market for it.
The training programs and service they provide to keep the systems they sell up and running not only fuel VDRS success, they have also spawned “the Amazon of the recycling industry” for selling spare parts. It’s a dedicated online sales platform with staff that turn around the thousands of orders they receive each year efficiently and fast.
What’s more, VDRS has been on the front lines of recycling in America for years, shaping solutions, solving challenges and piloting the industry to where it is today. When VDRS started, it was about bringing systems in North America even with their more advanced (at the time) European counterparts.
Left: Maarten, Pieter, and Florian in the VDRS test center, right: Test underway at the VDRS test center, the world’s largest test center for recycling
As single-stream recycling took off on this side of the ocean and customer needs expanded, VDRS pressed Bollegraaf, the Dutch manufacturer of the systems they represent, for more sophisticated technologies. Driven by the needs in North America, they now lead the world in capacity and functionality. Much of it, including screens, came from problem-solving brainstorms at VDRS.
“We’ve gotten to a point where the U.S. market has gotten so big for recycling and so different from Europe,” said Maarten, VDRS operations manager. He joined VDRS six years ago after taking the masters in engineering he earned at Northeastern University to Lang O’Rourke, the largest private construction firm in the U.K. He came home for the opportunities available to him at VDRS.
“They process harder here, they process faster. They’re rougher on the equipment here than they are in Europe. They don’t do maintenance as well,” he continued. “So I have R&D meetings every week with our main suppliers and we’re talking about what we’re seeing here. What the issues are.”
Now based in what was once Nivea’s North American headquarters in Norwalk, CT, VDRS is a multi-million dollar change maker selling 60% of the systems Bollegraaf makes. They also sell component parts from other suppliers that elevate the systems to meet the needs of the ever-advancing recycling industry in America. VDRS bought the eleven buildings that comprised the Nivea complex in 2012 with no debt. In fact, they own all their assets outright. They refurbished 156,000 of the 228,000 square feet of the space they now occupy, rented out two of the buildings and have more for lease (including an extensive wet lab where Nivea products were once formulated, in case you’re interested).
The living wall at VDRS headquarters mirrors the recycling streams in the company logo and consists entirely of real plants
Not bad for a family-owned and operated company of only 90 employees that began as a one-man show in 1984 out of Pieter’s 800-square-foot Astoria, Queens sublet.
“We stored the spare parts under my bed,” recalled Pieter, laughing. Those spare parts, valued at $25 million today, now occupy two airplane hangar-like spaces in Norwalk. The world’s largest test center for recycling – a $4 million VDRS investment – occupies another, drawing prospective customers as well as corporations looking to develop sustainable packaging to the weekly tests it runs. It’s a jaw-
dropping operation.
“We have the advantage of having a very good product,” said Pieter, “and we always give the customer the solution that’s best, not necessarily what they want to hear or what’s better for us,” he explained. “We sell more trust than anything,” he added. And he and Erik both know: as cutting edge as the systems and service they provide are, it’s the people who got them to where they are today.
“Our assets are our people. The employees go through fires for us,” said Pieter. “We give them a lot of freedom, we expect a lot back but they know they can trust us. We have basically no turnover,” he continued.
With a profit-sharing pension plan (no match required), fully funded health insurance including company-paid health savings accounts, four weeks of annual vacation, an onsite chef, generous salaries and an annual outing to which every employee and their spouse are flown in for a Broadway show and party, to name just a few of the benefits of VDRS employment, who would ever leave?
What’s more, it’s the kind of company where the president calls the receptionist when she gets COVID …just to check in and offer meals while she is recovering. The kind where the CEO’s sons join the business and roll up their sleeves, working from the ground up to prove themselves, like anyone else (maybe more than anyone else), accountable not to their dad or uncle but to the managers overseeing their work and their fellow employees, many of whom they’ve known their whole lives.
It’s also the kind of company where customers gather around the Eenkema van Dijk dinner table for home-cooked meals, where the boss’s daughter sings on the bus to the Broadway show—because everyone’s like family and that’s what they do at home. The kind in which the CEO’s wife knows every employee—their email, their family and their milestones (and acknowledges them).
“Pieter makes it the priority to take care of the employees and their families,” said Maarten. “You see what it turns into when the guys who appreciate how we support them turn it around and do extraordinary work. You see how that builds,” he continued, referencing in particular the technicians who spend up to 200 days a year on the road servicing customers.
And the Eenkema van Dijks give as good as they get.
“Pieter will also on the weekends pick up the phone. He knows when there is a difficult installation. He’ll call the guys on site, ask them how they’re doing and it could be late at night,” said Yvette who is well accustomed to Pieter’s late nights at the office, spur-of-the-moment trips to support a tricky installation or help with customer issues. “It’s the right thing to do,” she continued.
“There’s absolutely respect for all people,” Maarten added.
“The people who pack up the stuff in the warehouse, they’re just as important as Pieter and Erik. There’s no difference,” agreed Yvette.
And no wonder. It’s a company built on the same values that underpin the Eenkema van Dijk family.
“The family is the business and the business is the family,” explained Florian, a 2019 graduate of Tufts who joined the family business as a sales specialist a year ago, by way of political campaign work and the mortgage industry. “You’re honest and you have to pull your own weight and you have to take care of yourself. Those are definitely the values here,” he continued. “…being a good person and being kind, those apply too.”
Pieter, Lonneke, Yvette, Maarten, Maarten’s dog Maya and Florian on their 48’ Swan a Hint of Orange
That’s why Maarten and Florian don’t take any of it for granted. In fact, both were nervous approaching Pieter about joining the business.
“It is a very big struggle to start your own business and to grow it to what it is today. It’s amazing and I’m constantly impressed with Pieter and I stand on his shoulders,” said Maarten.
“We understand we have to work hard,” added Florian who along with his siblings always held jobs while growing up in Darien where all three attended Darien High School.
From left: Maarten, Lonneke and Florian
But for a cookie declined, it would not have been. Pieter never meant to leave the Netherlands, or start his own business. He came to the U.S. for an internship with a friend from Groningen University where he was studying economics, thinking the experience could help them land a big company job in Europe after graduation. The two had a chance to work for a New Jersey-based market research company owned by the friend’s uncle …if they could find two Dutch companies willing to spend $10k on the U.S. market research they would conduct as interns.
Jantje de Goede Cookies and Bollegraaf, a manufacturer of balers, machines that compress recyclables into tight, rectangular squares ready for shipping, agreed. The plan was for Pieter to take the cookies and his friend, the balers. Ever-so-slightly-more-tech-oriented than his friend, they swapped assignments at the last second.
Research completed, Pieter returned to Holland to finish college. After graduation, owner Hartog Bollegraaf asked him to open the U.S. market for him. A prescient businessman, Hartog agreed to the market research because although his business was concentrated in Europe, he saw a time 25 years hence, when U.S. demand would become meaningful.
Pieter said yes. He asked for and was granted the North American rights to sell Bollegraaf machines, along with $6,000 a month to cover rent, expenses, and flights to Europe for prospective customers to see the machines in action.
“Hartog made very good strategic decisions,” said Pieter. “He was a brilliant businessman, and a leader too: with workers on the floor or with high-level people,” he continued.
Hartog’s foresight notwithstanding, there was nothing easy about cracking a market cornered by existing “syndicates” – not operating out of such a tiny space, not lugging practically his whole living room to show videos of the equipment to prospects, and not trying to convince American businesses that a European supplier could be counted on to handle service issues that might arise.
With Hartog as his mentor, Pieter sold his first big system nine months in. From then, he could support the business on his own. After three years, he was able to pay back the money Hartog had given him. Erik joined him not long after he started, running the business while Pieter left to earn his MBA at Insead in France and decide whether or not he wanted to spend his life outside of Holland selling balers.
“After Insead, I realized how good I had it and went back, determined to expand the business,” explained Pieter.
He returned, met Yvette through a Dutch group in NYC. The two married, the company grew, expanding into recycling systems, the company moved. The company grew more, they moved again, and again—from that first sublet to three cubicles in a shared office space in Manhattan, to dedicated space in New Jersey, then Stamford and finally Norwalk.
Though it took several years to refurbish the Norwalk buildings, everything about them is as gezellig as the culture within them. From the living wall that mimics the recycling streams represented in the company logo, to the clean lines of the interior design and the rooftop garden, part of which is inspired by the High Line in Manhattan. It’s a place to breathe, to trust, to share ideas openly and innovate, where you know the owners are working just as hard as you are, often right by your side, and rewarding you for it.
But all this gezellig is not without a good dose of competitive spirit. Pieter and Yvette know it (count them out on a tennis court at your own peril), their kids know it – Maarten and Florian as top competitive sailors, Lonneke as a former #1 singles tennis player. This too feeds VDRS.
“Look, whatever you do, you need to be competitive to win,” said Pieter. “They used to have a sales meeting at Bollegraaf. They would have a team-building sporting event. I would be first. My brother would be second,” he recalled, laughing. “Because we want to win.”
And win they do. With integrity. With grit. With gezellig.
