Harry Kletter
Harry Kletter entered the waste business as a child working in his family’s one-truck junk business collecting recyclables. By 1952, he was the co-owner of a small junkyard in southern Indiana; 1961, a maker of stationary compactors; and a waste hauler by 1962. In 1969, his two-year-old company, Industrial Services of America , became the first public company in the waste industry. Kletter is known for innovation and holds several patents for improving technology and methods in waste handling. He is the sponsor of a scholarship at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.