One locally owned company, three jobs

People ask us all the time how Soil Dynamics, Gretna Sanitation and Hillside Solutions fit together. The short answer: we're one locally owned team, founded and run by Andy Harpenau out of Gretna, Nebraska, and each name is one job in the same loop.

The Gretna Sanitation and Hillside Solutions crew in front of a green collection truck

Gretna Sanitation

Started 2004

Picks up trash, recycling and yard waste at homes in Sarpy, Douglas and Cass Counties.

gretnasanitation.com
Skid steer loading compost at the Soil Dynamics yard

Soil Dynamics (that's us)

Started 2011

Turns the yard waste, tree waste and food scraps the other two collect into compost, soil blends and mulch, and sells them back to the community.

Products and prices
A mom and her kid high-five next to a Hillside Solutions Compost Club cart at the curb

Hillside Solutions

Started 2017

Handles businesses, schools and events: dumpsters, recycling, commercial composting, zero-waste consulting, and the Compost Club for households that want their food scraps composted.

hillside.solutions

Hillside Fund is the nonprofit arm, started in late 2025, focused on composting education and helping Nebraska farmers cut synthetic fertilizer use.

So when a Gretna Sanitation customer gets 20% off at our yard, or a Compost Club member redeems compost credits here, it's the same company closing the loop on material you helped collect. No partnership paperwork, no middleman. One phone number reaches all of it: (402) 332-4710.

Aerial view of the Soil Dynamics compost farm in Ashland, Nebraska

How Soil Dynamics started

In 2011, Andy started composting Gretna Sanitation's yard waste on a farm next to the Wildlife Safari Park in Ashland, and selling the mulch and soil to local landscapers. He didn't set out to build a composting company. The yard waste needed somewhere better to go than the landfill, and the farm had room.

It grew into the Omaha metro area's first commercial composting farm, and Soil Dynamics is now the only industrial composting operation in the metro. Along the way the company added food-scrap composting for restaurants and schools, a downtown Omaha yard where the public can buy product and drop off debris, a drywall recycling program, and a network of partner farms where processed organics go back onto Nebraska fields.

How the process works
Andy Harpenau accepting the US Composting Council Organics Diversion Program of the Year award for Soil Dynamics and Hillside Solutions

Meet the founder: Andy Harpenau

Andy grew up on a Nebraska farm, built houses, then started a trash company with his family in Gretna in 2004 after watching a dump truck go by and wondering how hard it could be. The yard waste those trucks hauled every spring became Soil Dynamics in 2011, and Hillside Solutions followed in 2017 to bring composting to businesses, schools and households. He'd rather be on a loader than in front of a camera.

In 2026 Earth Day Omaha named him its Friend of the Environment, and in 2025 the US Composting Council gave Soil Dynamics and Hillside Solutions its Organics Diversion Program of the Year award. The thing he talks about most is neither: it's getting Omaha's compost onto Nebraska farm fields in place of synthetic nitrogen.

Andy's story, the documentary and the awards

What we're trying to do

Keep organic material out of the landfill and put it back into Nebraska soil. That means composting at a scale that works for a metro of a million people, farming the land around our facility in a way that rebuilds it, and making the finished product good enough that landscapers and gardeners choose it because it works in their beds, whatever they think about landfills. Read about our regenerative agriculture work.

Recognition

The Nebraska Recycling Council named us End Market of the Year in 2020 and again in 2025. The US Composting Council named Soil Dynamics and Hillside Solutions its Organics Diversion Program of the Year in 2025, and Earth Day Omaha gave founder Andy Harpenau its 2026 Friend of the Environment award. Our work is supported by the Nebraska Environmental Trust and the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy. All the awards, with the videos.

Where to find us

Soil Dynamics Yard, Downtown Omaha

1725 Avenue G, Omaha, NE 68110. Retail, drop-off and Compost Club pickup.
Monday to Friday 8am to 3:30pm · Saturday 8am to noon, April through Thanksgiving.

Hours, directions and what to bring

Soil Dynamics Compost Farm, Ashland

16494 292nd Street, Ashland, NE 68003. Commercial customers by appointment, Monday to Friday 8am to 3pm.

Phone: (402) 332-4710 ext. 5 · Email: admin@soil-dynamics.com

Directions and tours