when waste helps the bottom line
As belts continue to tighten in organizations across the country, many companies are looking at reducing waste to save money. We suggest you start looking at that waste as something to profit from. Here are two examples of companies creating products from previously discarded matter.
Just last week, the City of San José unveiled a $20 million deal in which three private partners would produce 900,000 gallons of methane biogas from 150,000 gallons of their residents’ organic waste. If the project passes regulatory approval, it will use yard debris and food waste that would ordinarily go to the landfill. The city estimates that with this new venture they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to 1,800 vehicles a year, create green jobs, not to mention reduce the burden on landfill. Utilizing a process developed by the German company Bekon Energy Technology, the biomass is placed in concrete digesters and fermented. After a dry fermentation process, biogas and fertilizer pellets are leftover and available for sale.
In Portland, Oregon, a facility has just opened employing a new technology able to convert wastewater into environmentally-safe, premium-level, commercial fertilizer. The first of its kind in the U.S., the wastewater treatment facility employs a process that is able to remove various nutrients and up to 90 percent of the phosphorus in the wastewater, producing 500 tons of fertilizer annually. As part of a public/private partnership with Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, Clean Water Services (the owner/operator of the plant) is hoping that what was once considered waste will now be a new revenue stream. As Bill Gaffi, general manager of Clean Water Services puts it,
This technology will save our ratepayers money by extracting nutrients which would otherwise clog our pipes and reduce our plant’s treatment capacity, while also creating a unique and environmentally safe commercial fertilizer product.
It is quite impressive that companies and local governments are finding ways to turn something that used to cost them money to dispose of, into a new product and revenue stream. Isn’t it time we stopped looking at waste as something to dispose of, and started looking at it as a way to grow revenue? What are other examples you’ve seen where organizations are leading the charge to convert trash into cash?
[...] imagine what could happen if more organizations started to look at their waste as a resource; and if manufacturers looked at waste as a raw material. Seems to us that this is the ultimate in [...]