The WINR Nutrient Stewardship Program

Anybody Can Pay to Make It Disappear.

Every company in your category is writing a check to a landfill. None of them have anything to show for it. Nutrient Stewards do: a certificate, a documented impact report, a partner mark, and a place in the first group of companies to close the nutrient cycle in this country.

Become a Founding Partner →See What Partners Receive →

The Choice

This Is a Legacy Decision Disguised as a Disposal Decision

Waste disposal gets bid like a commodity. Cheapest hauler wins, the invoice gets filed, and nobody thinks about it again until something goes wrong.

But the material leaving your plant was grown in soil somewhere. Every ton of it carries nutrients that came out of the ground and have to go back into the ground, or they’re gone. That’s not sentiment. That’s the reason the country is importing fertility from overseas while burying it here at home.

You’re going to pay to move that material either way. The only question is whether you have anything to show for it in ten years.

A landfill gives you a receipt. Land application gives you five years of liability. WINR gives you a certificate, a number, and a story your own people are proud of.

How the Options Actually Compare

Three Places That Material Can Go

	Landfill	Land Application	WINR Center
Cost	Tipping fees, rising	Cheapest option	Competitive with landfill
Nutrients	Buried. Gone.	Applied, but rarely where it’s needed	Recovered and blended to a recipe
Your liability	Ends at the gate	Stays with you for years	Ends at our gate
Weather / timing	Any day	Only certain windows, only if it’s dry	Any day. Roads to the pad, like a landfill
Public exposure	Low, but methane	High. Neighbors notice.	Low. It becomes a product.
What you can say about it	Nothing	Nothing good	Certificate. Report. Numbers.

We’ll tell you straight: land application is cheaper, and for some materials at some times of year it’s still a fit. Abe’s said it himself. What it isn’t is defensible when a reporter shows up.

What Partners Receive

Recognition You Can Actually Put on a Wall

Every WINR partner receives the full stewardship package. It isn’t an upsell and it isn’t a tier. If your material comes through our gate, this is what comes back.

WINR Nutrient Steward Certificate

An issued, dated, signed certificate naming your organization and the tonnage you diverted. Physical and digital. Built to be framed in a lobby, not filed in a drawer.

Annual Sustainability Impact Report

A clean, documented, year-end report on exactly what your material became. Formatted so your sustainability team can lift it straight into their reporting.

WINR Partner Mark

A licensed digital badge for your website, your packaging conversations, your investor deck, your careers page. Yours to use for as long as you're a partner.

Your Numbers

Acres of soil restored. Tons of nutrients recovered. Tracked at the load level through our Ag Simplified platform, not estimated, not modeled from an industry average.

Carbon & Landfill Diversion Estimates

Tons diverted from landfill and the associated emissions avoided, methodology disclosed. Real math with real limits. We'll tell you what's measured and what's estimated.

Recognition at Our Annual Partner Gathering

Founding partners are named from the stage at the annual gathering of the people building this industry: growers, processors, regulators, and the WINR network.

The Annual Report

Every Load, Accounted For

The report is the part your sustainability team has been trying to get out of a waste hauler for years and never could. We built it because Abe wanted something clean enough that a partner could hand it to a board, or a regulator, without editing it first.

Tonnage diverted
By month, by material stream, verified at the scale.
Nutrient recovery
Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, calcium and the rest of the 17, recovered and returned.
Where it went
Acres restored, counties served, the farms your material fed.
Carbon and diversion estimates
Landfill avoidance and emissions math, methodology disclosed.

Documented, auditable, and yours. If our numbers ever can’t survive scrutiny, the whole program is worthless to you, so we don’t publish numbers that can’t.

The Mark

Something Your Competitors Can’t Buy

There are a lot of green logos for sale. This one isn’t for sale. It’s issued, it’s tied to verified tonnage, and it comes off the wall if the material stops coming through the gate. That’s what makes it worth having.

Use it on your site, your recruiting materials, your investor updates, your customer conversations. We’ll give you the files and the one-page usage guide.

What Partners Are Actually Buying

Four Reasons This Is Worth More Than the Line Item

Separation From Your Competitors

Everyone in your category has a sustainability page. Almost none of them have a number, a certificate, and a farm they can point to. This is the difference between a claim and a receipt.

A Commitment to the Next Generation

Do you want your legacy to be money only, or do you want your kids proud of what you did with your career? The material leaving your plant is the most direct answer to that question you'll get all year.

Support for the Local Economy

Ninety-five cents of every dollar spent on WINR products stays in-state, against eighty-five cents of every imported-fertilizer dollar going overseas. Local trucks, local jobs, local ground.

Fertilizer Independence

The country imports its fertility, then watches the price move every time a trade dispute flares up. Every ton recovered here is a ton we don't have to buy from somewhere else. Your waste stream is a domestic nutrient supply that nobody has to negotiate for.

The Part Nobody Puts in a Brochure

Your Liability Ends at Our Gate

Land-applied material stays yours. The generator carries the liability for years while it works its way into the ground, and carries the reputational exposure the entire time. Every EHS manager reading this already knows what a hard rain and a storage pad can turn into.

Composted material doesn’t work that way. It comes through our gate, it’s blended into our products, and it becomes a new product that we own. Our permits. Our process. Our problem.

And if it ends up on the news, it isn’t your name in the story. Ask around your industry how much that’s worth. Somebody in Sioux City could tell you.

“If everybody wins in this transaction, it's impossible to fail. I don't have to take from somebody and give to somebody else. Every single person wins.”

Abe Sandquist, Founder, Natural Fertilizer Services

Iowa Entrepreneur of the Year 2025 | 20 years in nutrient recovery

The First Group

There Are Only a Few of These

The first WINR Center comes online in 2026. The first partners on the pad are the ones this industry will point to in twenty years, the ones who moved before there was a case study, a mandate, or a competitor forcing their hand.

Founding partners are recognized permanently. Named at the grand opening. Named on this page. Named from the stage every year after that. And they help shape how the program works, because it’s being built with them, not at them.

We’re being straight with you about the trade: you’re going first, on a facility that’s still being commissioned, with a partner whose track record is twenty years of nutrient management and an approved USDA FPEP grant, but not yet a wall of logos. That’s exactly why the recognition means something. It won’t be available later.

Permanent founding-partner designation on the mark and certificate
A feature story, in podcast, video, and press, telling your side of why you moved first
A seat in the room while the program’s standards are written

Becoming a Nutrient Steward

Four Steps, No Committee

We assess your waste stream

Volume, composition, frequency, what you're paying now. One call, no obligation.

We build the plan

Pickup schedule, logistics, tipping structure, and the reporting you'll get back.

Your material starts moving

We handle transport. Every load is weighed and recorded from day one.

You get your numbers

Certificate and impact report issued annually. Mark issued on day one.

Start With a Call →

Questions We Hear

Is this certification? Who audits it?

No, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. This is issued recognition backed by our own load-level records, which we'll show you and which your team can audit. Third-party verification is on the roadmap as the program grows. When we get there, we'll say so.

What does it cost?

The program costs nothing. It's included for every partner. What you pay is the tipping fee for your material, which depends on volume, composition, frequency, and distance, and which in many cases is competitive with what you're paying the landfill now. We'll give you a straight answer on a call.

Are there tax benefits?

Not today. Abe is actively working with policymakers on incentives for organizations that recycle nutrients or use recycled nutrients, but nothing is on the books, and we're not going to sell you something that doesn't exist. What we can tell you is that partners are documented from load one, so if incentives arrive, you're already positioned to claim them.

Can I use the mark in advertising?

Yes, within the usage guide we provide. It stays active as long as you're an active partner. We'll never license it to someone who isn't actually sending us material. That's the only reason it's worth anything.

What happens to my liability?

It ends when the material comes through our gate and is blended into our products. From that point it's a new product, and it's ours. That's a real, structural difference from land application, where the generator carries it for years.

We already have a waste contract. Why change?

Most of our conversations start there, and we're not asking you to move everything. Start with one stream. One line item. See the report in January and decide from there.

Do I have to be in Iowa?

The first two facilities are in Western Iowa with a third site purchased. If you're outside that radius, reach out anyway. Where partners are is a large part of how we decide where the next center goes.

Let’s Talk

Decide What Your Waste Stream Says About You

Book a call. We'll look at your material, tell you honestly whether we're a fit, and show you exactly what your first certificate would say.

Schedule Your Call →Or call directly: (712) 647-2810, Monday–Friday

“We are here for the right reasons. To benefit everybody, to make an impact, and to have fun.” Abe