There are two growing trends in managing waste: converting waste to energy and organic composting of waste.
Waste Management, a leading developer of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities, has decided to impact both realms.
Waste Management will be investing in Harvest Power, a developer of energy production and compost from discarded organic materials. With this investment, Waste Management hopes to expand their organic recycling facilities across the United States and Canada.
Prior investors, Kleiner Perkins Cauflield & Byers and Munich Venture Partners, increased their investments in Harvest Powers because of the support from Waste Management.
“We want to extract more value from the materials we manage than anyone else in our industry through new and emerging processing and conversion technologies,” said Tim Cesarek, managing director of Organic Growth at Waste Management.
Over 180 million tons of organic waste is generated from North America each year. New national, provincial and state mandates and incentives strive to increase the demand for clean energy resources for these areas.
Though Waste Management specializes in waste-to-energy developments, it has three sustainability goals outside its own practice: double its renewable energy production; triple the amount of recyclables processed by 2020; and invest in emerging technologies for managing waste.
By harnessing energy from organic materials, Harvest Power would like to increase energy independence for communities while reducing the environmental impact; a goal shared by Waste Management.
Currently, Harvest Power has innovative technologies for composting, biogas production, and biomass gasification.
Harvest is actively developing innovative technologies for solids aerobic and anaerobic digestion and composting; this will accelerate the decomposition of organic materials so it can produce renewable energy.
“Through partnerships with leaders like Waste Management, and by designing, building, owning and operating our own facilities, we will be turning more organic waste into renewable energy and high quality compost. Our goal is to harvest the power in organic materials to create more sustainable communities, and we look forward to expanding our business with our new partner,” said Paul Sellew, co-founder and chief executive officer of Harvest Power.