Alumni Spotlight

FSC alum strikes gold with green business 

by Meghan Goff 

As an aspiring entrepreneur and student, balancing the demands of work and his growing family, Orville Davis ’19 had to be scrappy. So, it’s only fitting that his business venture followed suit. Orville is the owner of Scrap-It!, an environmentally-conscious waste removal business that encourages recycling and repurposing of waste in homes, offices, and construction sites. But his idea wasn’t developed overnight—Orville was thinking green while studying at Farmingdale State College (FSC). 

In 2018, Orville, along with his wife and fellow FSC graduate, Cynthia, competed in FSC’s first Innovation Challenge, a workshop that placed students from different disciplines together to create a new business idea. Orville’s concept for a green alternative to waste removal took first place, and Scrap-It! was born. But that wasn’t the last accolade he would receive. The team won a number of entrepreneurial competitions state-wide in 2018 and 2019 and received an honorable mention at the national e-Fest Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge. Most recently, Scrap-It! was awarded $2,000 to further its growth and development as the winner of the Farmingdale Student Alumni Grant (FSAG), an entrepreneurial competition hosted by the FSC Alumni Association.  

“To think, it all started from this one competition,” says Orville. “But by utilizing everything that was available at FSC, we were able to put the pieces together to continue building. Now, Scrap-It! is competing with top competitors in the industry.”

That success, and the tools to grow and maintain a thriving business, Orville attributes to the strong foundation his FSC education provided. “I took full advantage of the valuable resources at FSC,” he says. “I’m not an expert in everything, so I had to turn to the experts.” For Orville, that meant the guidance of mentors like Dr. Jing Betty Feng, assistant professor at the Department of Business Management and founder of the Innovation Challenge, who he still meets with regularly, as well as his peers and teammates, who provided him valuable experience leading and managing teams. 

Now, as a business owner and an FSC alum, it’s rewarding to see his own success come full circle as he gives back to FSC students, and the community itself. “Farmingdale provided me with an opportunity, and I’m proud to be able to bring some recognition and accomplishment back to the place it all started,” he says.