I’m glad to see you all looking so alert, so eager, so prosperous this morning. I promise you that at the end of our little talk and tour, you’ll be even more eager, and potentially more prosperous, because you didn’t come here to be entertained. You came here to get in on the ground floor, and “ground” is a good word for it, of the most unique investment opportunity since the opening of the American West.
So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, as my grandad used to say. We’re here to talk about something people don’t usually like to talk about. Even though there’s plenty of it around. Last year, in 1999, the average family in the New York metropolitan area produced 157.4 pounds of it in a week. This comes to 645,527 cubic yards of it a day, or—uncompacted—an Empire State Building every 16.4 days or a truckload every six and a half minutes.
What in the world is he talking about? Well, we all know, don’t we? You there, madam, on the second row. I can see your lips forming the very word itself.
But you’re wrong.
I’m not talking about garbage. Not anymore. I’m talking about real estate. I’m talking about land.
“Land,” my granddad used to say, “is the only surefire investment there is, because God’s not making any more of it.”
He was right about it being a surefire investment. But he was wrong about why. Because even though God’s not making any more of it, we at Eden-Prudential are. But I don’t have to tell you folks that. That’s why you’re here.
I see some of you are getting your calculators out. Good. Let’s look at those numbers again. 11,987,058 cubic meters of solid waste, and that’s what we can collect, process, transport, and place in a month, can, in the right hands, translate to a quarter acre of beautiful mountain view property, or sixteen feet of ocean front. Notice I say “in the right hands.” That’s where Eden-Prudential comes in. Even as you and I speak, EP’s trucks are running and EP’s barges are under sail. We have four fleets of 138 trucks apiece—all independent contractors, by the way; real mom ‘n’ pop types—operating from our catchment and processing center on Staten Island. Every eighteen minutes sees five trucks dispatched, three to south Jersey, and two to Montauk; all working around the clock to make America not only more prosperous than ever, but a little bit bigger. And more valuable.
But enough poetry. Let’s talk opportunity. What area produces the most solid waste in the world, per square mile of already existing land? The New York metropolitan area. And what area contains the world’s most valuable real estate? Or to put it another way: is there any other place in the world where land is in such short supply and where people are so willing—not to mention able—to pay for it?
Again, you just can’t beat the New York area.
A surplus of garbage. A shortage of land. Put those two facts together in the right equation, and you come up with what we at EP call IP, or Investment Potential. But it was only potential, and potential only, until the invention of the Eden Land Developer, the solid-waste transformer that turns ordinary garbage of any kind, shape, or origin, into quality, consistent, durable
If you will be kind enough to take one of the foil-wrapped souvenir samples Miss Crumb is passing around the room… Go ahead, open it. It’s going to make you rich. Don’t be afraid of getting your hands dirty because you won’t.
Does it look like dirt? Not with that attractive gold color, it doesn’t. It’s Eden Earth. Go ahead, sniff it. Taste it if you want to. My great-great-granddad was a farmer, God rest his soul, out in Iowa, I think it was, and he never judged a piece of land without putting a piece of it on his tongue.
No takers. Well, I understand.
You can take my word for it: what you hold in your hand is a piece of solid waste that has been not only recycled but reconstituted, not to mention eye- and odor-enhanced, to make an earth that is the equal to, and in many ways actually superior to, the earth that the Earth itself is made of.
Do I see eyebrows lifting?
Well, try to crumble it. This cookie doesn’t crumble. Dunk it—it’s water-resistant and therefore it doesn’t turn into mud. You’ll notice it doesn’t soil your hands or stain your shirt. Its epoxy polymer additives mean that smells and stains are locked in, and that once we put it in place it stays there—it doesn’t dry up and blow away like the Great Plains in the dust bowl, or wash away like the beaches of Long Island in a hurricane. Eden Earth is