"It's a rough environment and you're dealing with some rough characters, " he says.

But the frontier life seems to appeal to the Greenstar chief executive.

In the three years since he took the job the company has established itself as Ireland 's largest waste management concern. Turnover has doubled to 130m, and the acquisitions have come thick and fast. Under Cowman, Greenstar has continued the land-grab, or perhaps more appropriately landfill grab, begun by founder John Gallagher.

Gallagher snatched up a handful of waste companies under his Celtic Utilities banner and sold it to infrastructure group NTR in 2001. Cowman arrived two years later to take the company, which by then had been rebranded as Greenstar, on to the next level.

"The bit that interested me was that NTR wanted to take the business from being a collection of businesses to a vertically-integrated company and build a platform for growth, " he says.

In his previous role with General Semiconductor, Cowman had been despatched from the head office in the US to close down its plant in Macroom. When GS was bought out by Vishay, its Cork factory was listed as surplus to requirements and production was moved to the Far East . He was happy with the package agreed for the former GS workers, some of whom were later re-employed when the company agreed a deal with Elan to take over the facility.

"I'd have no problem going down to Macroom without the fear of getting kneecapped, " he jokes, but overall he describes the experience as "a little bit disheartening".

One of the attractions of the Greenstar job was that it provided the opportunity to build up a business rather than closing one down.

"It's kind of nice being involved in a company without looking over your shoulder waiting for it to be exported to China, " he says.

It's also nice for him and his family to stay in the one country for longer than a year.

Cowman reckons he has moved home 17 times in his career. It has been a great adventure, he says, but not without its drawbacks. The nononsense Dubliner, schooled by the Christian Brothers at O'Connell's in the inner city, says he found it difficult even to remember his way around his native city on visits home.

"I could find my way around Taipei or New York but I'd get lost every time I came to Dublin."

His eldest daughter, now 17, has attended schools in Hong Kong, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Dundalk. The Greenstar job, which itself involved another move for the family, from Westport to Dublin, was a good chance to put down some more permanent roots.

There is no fear of NTR causing the family to up sticks again by moving Greenstar's operations abroad. Waste collection, the only labour-intensive part of the operation, can't be outsourced to Shenzen or Mumbai and it doesn't make economic sense to ship the waste abroad to be treated or recycled. Furthermore, now that Greenstar has achieved sufficient scale, it does make economic sense for it to invest in infrastructure to handle the waste it collects.

Cowman recently presided over the opening of a 25m materials recovery facility on Dublin's northside which, the company believes, is the largest in operation anywhere in Britain or Ireland. It already has planning permission for a second one in Bray which would serve the southside of Dublin from Greenstar's Wicklow base. In the near future Cowman would like to see two more recycling facilities added to that list, one in Cork and another in Connacht.

Greenstar now has the necessary tonnage to invest heavily in what Cowman refers to as "expensive kit" to increase the amount of material it can recover, recycle and otherwise divert from ending up in landfill.

Landfill charges are now over 100 per tonne of material in many local authority sites, up from less than 20 ten years ago.

While the scarcity of land has forced those charges up, commodities prices have also risen sharply. At the same time, technology used to separate the constituent materials in the waste collected by companies such as Greenstar has improved dramatically in effectiveness and come down in price.

The net result is that Greenstar can make money from investing 25m in a materials recovery facility because it can recover a ton of plastic which will fetch 400 on the open market rather than having to send it to landfill at a cost of 100. Those are the sort of numbers that give Cowman confidence that Greenstar can double its turnover in size again over the next three years. "I think there's a real opportunity for us to take this business to 250m, " he says.

Apart from anything else, Cowman is looking at a sector which remains largely fragmented. Although it has been busily buying up smaller rivals since its formation, Greenstar still accounts for only around 12% of the 1.5bn waste management market, according to the company's best estimates.

There are some 400 operators in the sector ranging from small one-truck businesses all the way up the scale to fully integrated waste management companies such as AES, Greenstar, Thorntons and Greyhound Recycling.

The years ahead are likely to be characterised by further consolidation, according to Cowman.

In the past month Greenstar has spent 20m to bolt on two medium-sized regional players, Ormonde Waste in the southeast and Hannon Recycling in Cork. Cowman said both represent a good geographic fit for Greenstar, expanding its presence in Leinster into Wexford and Kilkenny and giving it what Cowman refers to as a "corridor" through Waterford into Cork and the wider Munster area.

Having secured a 200m finance facility last year, Greenstar can be expected to make other, similar-sized acquisitions in the medium term. Cowman believes the company is in a strong position and well-placed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the new recycling technology to boost its top line growth.

At the same time, though, he says he has serious concerns about Ireland 's ability as a nation to manage its waste problems. It could be interpreted as a self-serving position. It suits Greenstar to be seen as a potential solution to those problems. It also advances the waste management industry's long-held view that local authorities, which have a vested interest in landfill because of the income they generate from running the sites, should exit the waste management business and leave it to privateers.

But, Cowman says, the facts are that Ireland is likely to fall well short of EU-mandated targets to reduce the amount of waste it sends to landfill and increase the amount it recycles by 2010. According to Greenstar's estimates, based on its current rate of waste generation and the projected level of recycling and recovery over the next four years, Ireland will incur fines of up to 500m after 2010.

"In a way, we're looking down the barrel of a gun. There's a lot of sticking the head in the ground and hoping that everything is okay, " he says.

The former tech-guy turned trash-guy is convinced that investing in the type of technology that Greenstar is now using is the best way to get the situation under control. The good news, according to Cowman, is that because Ireland has waited so long to implement a waste management strategy it now has a chance to pick and choose the best technology and the best practice from countries such as Germany , which are on track to meet their targets. The bad news is that there is very little chance of getting the necessary infrastructure in place in time to avoid the fines.

In the meantime, Greenstar is putting its money where Cowman's mouth is to back up to three more materials recovery facilities and underpin its push to break the quarter of a billion turnover mark. "It would be a pretty good position to be in after three years, " he says. More to the point, with his days of constant motion behind him, Cowman plans to be right here to see it come to pass.

CV

STEVE COWMAN
Age: 48
Family: Married with two teenage daughters Background: Graduated from UCD with an engineering degree. Worked for a time with Enterprise Ireland as a development manager.

Began a career in the electronics industry with General Electric, taking several management positions in different parts of the globe. Has also worked, at various times, with Harris Corporation, General Semiconductor, Vishay and electrical equipment manufacturer Volex, where he headed the company's European operations.

Hobbies: A keen golfer, Cowman plays off a handicap of "ve. NTR shareholders should note, he says jokingly, that his handicap was a mere three when he joined the company and has declined "by 60%" such has been his dedication to the Greenstar job.