In the recycling industry space, there are neither many Blacks nor many women. So, Black women leading recycling companies are a rarity, indeed. Yet, Houston-born and Third Ward-raised Brandi Harleaux heads a company, South Post Oak Recycling Center, that has not only been in business for 29 years, but is doing so well that Harleaux was recently honored at the White House for being named the Small Business Administration’s Texas Business Owner of the Year.
The Defender spoke with Harleaux about her path to entrepreneurship
DEFENDER: Can you please introduce yourself to the Defender faithful?
BRANDI HARLEAUX: My name is Brandi Harleaux. I’m the CEO of South Post Oak Recycling Center. We are a metal recycling center headquartered here in Houston, Texas, and serving the Gulf Coast region. We’ve been in business for 29 years, May 2, believe it or not. I am a second-generation owner, and I am very proud to represent a company and a team that is on a daily basis making a direct impact on the environment. We like to say, “We move metals responsibly.” So, our focus is on recycling metals and electronics. And that includes anything from aluminum, brass, copper, stainless steel, iron. And we are getting that primarily from households, like you and myself, that would have aluminum cans or plumbing from our homes.
We also work with contractors; your HVAC technicians, your electricians, your plumbers, our contractors and our trades that have recyclable metal as a byproduct of their jobs on a daily basis. But the bulk of our growth has happened more on the B-to-B and business-to-government side. We have contracts with utility companies, oil and gas companies, energy construction, whereby they have materials left over, that are obsolete. They have parts, they have downhole drilling valves, and we recycle, and we actually pay people for the value of that. So, that’s a little bit about what we do. I like to say we are a direct link in the sustainability chain. And as my dad would say, “We were green before green was cool.”
DEFENDER: Is this where you saw yourself when you were eight-year-old Brandi? And if not, what were you envisioning?
HARLEAUX: Absolutely not. I think the conundrum with multi-generational businesses, and you don’t see a lot of them in our culture, is that I think our parents want us to do something different. They want us to do something more or presumably better. They want you to get further. And so, I was not encouraged to come into this industry. My parents were first-generation entrepreneurs. I was always told growing up, “Hey, Brandi, reach for the stars.” That was kind of my parents’ motto, born and raised in Third Ward, and just achieving. And with their focus being on, we need to do better, I guess by the time they had me — I’m the oldest of three girls, so I jokingly say I’m my dad’s son, his very feminine son — but it was, “Hey, go to college, get a degree, find something that you love, that you’re passionate about, and go do that.” So, I did what a lot of people do. And not all, but mine was, “Brandi, let’s go to college.” I chose to focus on industrial organizational psychology, which was a blessing based on a counselor that I had at Lamar High School who exposed me to different fields of psychology. And I learned early on that the intersection of business and psychology was what I was interested in. And that’s what industrial organizational psychology was. So, I went along that path, got a master’s in it, moved from Houston to California.
DEFENDER: What’s your elevator speech to Black people about why recycling is important?
HARLEAUX: Recycling is important because if we really look to the future and we care about the land and the space that our kids are living in and that our kids’ kids are living in, it’s important that we start thinking about the materials that we use today. And how we think about the materials that we use today, and where we put them or where we take them, is a direct correlation to not only our kids’ future, but it directly impacts our infrastructure and everything that we touch today. So, the more we recycle, the more that goes back into everyday items such as the roads and bridges that we’re on; the plumbing or the piping that’s in our house, the cars that we use. So, it is both a short-term benefit implication and a long-term implication.
