"Hardware or software?"

he remembers asking about the company seeking a new chief executive. The recruiter had orders to keep his client's identity secret. "More on the hardware end, " the recruiter would only say, before eventually setting him up for an interview with NTR, parent company that rebranded the Celtic Utilities business as Greenstar.

The idea of leaving the clean-seeming hi-tech sector for a business most associated with Tony Soprano and the things most of us would be horrified to find stuck to the soles of our shoes is less counter-intuitive today than it seemed a few years ago.

At first, Cowman's international and technology sector experience came in handy when pitching for the waste business for companies like HP and IBM. But now waste itself is going corporate and going hi-tech.

Addressing a conference on Peak Oil last week in Cork, Lord Oxburgh, a former Shell Oil non-executive chairman, predicted that organic bits of old municipal waste . . . rubbish . . . would be a significant future source of energy as fossil fuels begin to run out and today's oil prices of $82 a barrel look cheap.

At roughly the same time, Cowman was giving a similar speech at an Enterprise Ireland event in another part of the country.

As a Forfas report pointed out last year, Ireland is still near the bottom of international league tables when it comes to dealing with the 3.2 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) we produce each year.

Until only a few years ago, virtually all of it went to landfill.

"First thing, we have to get our priorities right . . . we could divert a lot more of material from the waste stream, recycled or reused. Einstein's theory of relativity says that energy can't be created or destroyed.

Where the energy has gone into making the plastic, why burn it to get the energy back out of it when you could reuse it?"

Nearly half of the 275m spent in the past few years by Greenstar is invested in infrastructure including processing and treatment facilities to take out useful bits that would otherwise go to landfill. Profit is a clear motive for innovation here.

To bring a ton of waste to a landfill costs 150. But if you can extract 40% of that ton and sell the useful bits to cover your costs, you've profited from the efficiency. Stone can be sold for aggregates or to become low-grade concrete.

Cardboard and paper go to mills in the UK and Europe, fetching 90 a ton. Plastics go for between 100 and 400 per ton. Aluminium 850 per ton.

More exotic treatments for the organic stuff that would otherwise turn to methane . . .which does 20 times the damage to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

By using so-called anaerobic digestion it can actually be turned into electricity.

"If you can extract these materials, and get a value return, the whole process changes, " Cowman says.

"That's good for the environment and good for the business."

Cowman has taken his GE Six Sigma black belt and plans to use it to beat the average 55% success rate to consolidate the waste business in Ireland.

Hundreds of local private operators are around. Greenstar has a 12% market share at present and forecasts it will turn over more than 160m this year once it stitches together its most recent acquitions, Bailey Waste Recycling and Rainbow Refuse, which Greenstar bought earlier this month for 15.5m.

Cowman shows no signs of stopping. When we meet at a Sandyford hotel before the morning rush hour he's already on his second meeting with corporate financial advisers.

More acquisitions, including in Northern Ireland, are in the pipeline.

He predicts that revenues will hit 300m within three to four years with an additional 250m earmarked for spending on investments.

But the success of Greenstar . . . and other expansionist private operators such as Panda Waste . . . is not universally welcome.

Last week Dublin City Council assistant manager Matt Twomey railed against Greenstar and Panda, signalling that the private operators are noisy, the extra trucks pollute and the private sector ignores the disadvantaged.

Twomey wants local monopolies on household waste collection.

Cowman argues that Twomey's objections are more about ensuring that the proposed Ringsend incinerator has enough of its 660,000-ton capacity filled with waste to burn. Cowman, who has other uses for the waste, is digging in for a lengthy, bruising battle with Dublin City Council over the issue.

"We'll look back in a few years' time and say why did we back the wrong horse in the wrong race? While there's a need to today, there's no guarantee there will be a need in 25 years' time.

"If you look at today, our recycling rate is 30% from zero five years ago.

"If you extrapolate that forward, that incinerator will have to be fed by waste as far away as Limerick and Cork."

-=-=-=-

CV

STEVE COWMAN Age: 49 Job: Chief executive, Greenstar Career: Joined Greenstar four years ago; previously head of European operations for Volex.

Started out in Enterprise Ireland, then went to work in technology beginning in an engineering role, moving to marketing and general management. Worked at General Electric, Harris Corporation, General Semiconductor and Vishay before joining Volex.

Education: Engineering at UCD, 1980, and Sheffield, 1981.

Received an MBA from Trinity College Dublin, 1991.

Family: Married with two children Hobbies: Golf (has a handicap of 5); keen chess player; current affairs.