By Joshua Silla
NORTH HOLLYWOOD — As lunchtime ends, Arminta Street Elementary students line up to throw food into trashcans, later sorted and added to a soil pile. For some, the end result may seem mundane – but it’s what New Earth Regeneration Initiative founder Carlos Marin says is an important “proof of concept” capable of changing California’s landscape for years to come.
Marin’s mission is to develop innovative sustainable solutions to large-scale environmental challenges, like California’s growing desertification.
After witnessing the San Francisco Bay Area’s historic “Orange Skies Day” wildfire event in 2020, when surrounding fires burned across the area creating a thick orange hue across the sky as the smoke dimmed the sun, Marin pivoted career paths, shifting his decade-long focus in finance to one of environmentalism.
“I’ve always cared about environmental issues, but [“Orange Skies Day] when I said ‘Something needs to be done,’” Marin said.
He founded NERI in May 2022, enrolling in Cal State Northridge’s masters program a year later and graduating with a degree in Sustainability and Environmental Studies.
His thesis on evaluating composting methods with biological agents became groundwork for his mission.
At Arminta Street Elementary, one of the initiative’s three project sites, he’s able to accomplish that goal through the program’s Organic Waste Processing System (OWPS).
“Just [90 square feet of OWPS] can process over 10,000 pounds,” Marin said.
The initiative’s lab analysis of commercial compost found that commercial composts had significantly lower nutrient content. Compared to this, NERI’s processing system sees on-average 350% higher nutrient levels, thanks to its special selection of native biological agents: red worms, black soldier flies and roly-polies.
According to Marin, OWPS’s nutrient-producing quality can impact dry, arid landscapes like California.
“We’ve lost tree coverage in the past 50 years in Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties,” Marin said. “If we don’t have vegetation, the soil becomes like concrete and water can’t penetrate. That’s why we have all these floods: the water has nowhere to go.”
Marin said OWPS retains seven to 10 times more water. He’s hopeful about the future for a place like California, where organic waste could be used to restore areas, allowing water to be retained for much longer throughout the warmer months.
Arminta Street Elementary Principal Rene Ramirez, who oversees the ordeal alongside the school’s plant manager and other campus supervisors, said New Earth Regeneration Initiative’s waste-disposal and management process is relatively easy to follow.
“Our students are really good now, at separating food waste from plastic and paper cartons,” Ramirez said of the initiative, otherwise known as NERI. “It’s easy to do and it does require a lot of monitoring, but so far, so good.”
The initiative’s easily-manageable project site is why Arminta Street Elementary is preparing to become one of the few “green schools” in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Another project site, California Mental Health Connection in Baldwin Park, operates at a smaller scale but to the same effect. Instead of students, community members manage the site. The pantry processes more than 6,500 pounds of organic waste per year, with the soil supporting local gardens and community green spaces.
Because of both sites’ success, NERI has received the green light to begin work at their acre-wide Holtsville site, east of San Diego County, which is “[Arminta] on steroids,” Marin said.
He continued: “We’re going to see if we can replicate the success we’ve had reducing 90% to 95% of the food waste here for larger businesses.”
Among other past accolades, Marin was recognized by the city of West Covina in a Sept. 16 meeting for presenting his work at the 2025 United Nations Science Summit.
“It’s all about getting information out there,” Marin said. “We shouldn’t be using so much energy and water to produce something that’s essentially a fire-hazard. It was exciting to present at such a platform.”
As the NERI project sites continue to operate, Marin’s success shows no signs of slowing down. Because of the cyclical nature and minimal resources each site needs to operate, Marin sees no end goal other than complete soil regeneration.
“It’s one of the things that gets me most excited,” Marin said.