by Alexander G. Baron

A Somerville-based
company that began as a three-person Boston operation  in 1988 is now the leading waste disposer for
higher education and health facilities in the Northeast.

"We dominate the
market," said Denise M. Hutchins, director of corporate communications for
Triumvirate Environmental.

Triumvirate does a lot
of things–chemical clean-up. technical training, environmental consulting–but
their primary service is the transport and disposal of waste for the higher
education, health care and life sciences industries, which they provide to many
of the big names in health care and every major university in the region,
said Hutchins.

Forty percent of this
waste is considered non-hazardous, and includes different types of paints and
adhesives. Triumvirate also disposes of flammable materials and radioactive
waste that is low concentration, meaning that it is fairly standard material in
hospitals and laboratories.

"It’s the kind of
stuff you can buy," said Thomas J. Aicardi, Triumvirate’s executive vice
president.

Each morning, trucks
belonging to Triumvirate’s fleet of 65 depart from the garage in

Somerville

to facilities throughout the region. They return
loaded with waste, which, for the most part, is burned away. In cases in which
hazardous material remains after burning, such as low-level radioactive waste,
it is transported to appropriate landfills in other regions.

Aicardi and Hutchins
both credit Triumvirate’s specialization in hazardous waste transport and
disposal with the company’s success over competitors.

"They have the
mindset of being everything to everybody," said Hutchins. "We focus on
certain vertical markets where we can be the best."

They also said that
Triumvirate was a more serious cultivator of employee skills and knowledge. The
company’s aggressive human resources department works closely with many
colleges and universities, including regional schools to recruit promising students.

Employees of
Triumvirate then receive frequent additional training at company-sponsored
workshops, an average of 100 hours a year per employee, said Hutchins.

"We re-invest in
our people again and again," said executive vice president Aicardi.

Aicardi had at one time
a career in commercial real estate. When the Massachusetts Oil and Hazardous
Material Release Prevention and Response Act (MGL 21E) required an examination
of his sites, he learned that nearly all of them were contaminated. The
experience prompted him to take a job with a fledgling waste disposal company,
Triumvirate Environmental, which had been founded by a 23 year-old
environmentalist named John F. McQuillan.

The company’s business
grew steadily from then on and boomed after its move to
Somerville in 1993. It acquired a robust clientele,
clustered for the most part inBoston and New York, and not long ago bought a new facility in Astoria, N.Y. McQuillan remains the CEO.

McQuillan was recently
honored by the Boston Jaycees with the TOYL award for his work with the
Just-A-Start House in

Somervillefor pregnant homeless and teenage women. The award is presented annually to ten
outstanding young leaders (TOYL).

McQuillan gives
workshops at the Just-A-Start House and helps with cooking and other work.
Other Triumvirate employees often join him.

By engaging in many
such activities, the company appears to give conscious encouragement of
community service, particularly efforts to promote environmental education in Somerville. Employees make voluntary visits to local schools
where they talk to small groups about the necessity of staying in school and
fifth graders from St. Peter’s

Catholic School in Dorchester have been hosted for a day to learn about
chemistry, recycling and other environmental issues. Triumvirate also offers an
annual scholarship to for Somerville High School student intending to go into environmental studies and to a student at
the Massachusetts Maritime Academy

 The company itself has
become a member of the Clean Charles Coalition, whose goal was to make the Charle River fishable and swimmable by 2005. It is now 85
percent of the way to becoming fishable and 70 percent toward being swimmable,
said executive vice president Aicardi, who has been personally involved. He
talks to proprietors of businesses such as restaurants and auto body shops
about storage and disposal of contaminants.

For example, there are
1200 restaurants in three different communities along the Charles, he said, and
if each one disperses a small amount of grease into the environment, the
cumulative effect is enormous.

Triumvirate also
exchanges digital thermometers for mercury thermometers brought to them by
community members.

But Triumvirate
continues its essential community service mission each morning with the
departure for the trucks and the disposal of new loads of waste created by the Boston area’s extensive research and health care
sectors.