Anaerobic digestion (converting food and organic waste to biogas and digestate)

The world generates over 2 billion tons of municipal solid waste every year, and that number is growing fast. Most of it ends up in landfills or gets burned, releasing greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals into the environment.

This isn't just an environmental crisis — it's economic waste on a massive scale. We're throwing away valuable materials that could be reused, recycled, or converted into energy. Meanwhile, plastic pollution is choking our oceans, electronic waste is piling up with toxic heavy metals, and organic waste in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO2.

The current waste management system was designed for a linear economy: take, make, dispose. But we need to shift to a circular economy where materials stay in use as long as possible. That requires better technology, smarter systems, and new business models that make waste valuable instead of costly.

Food scraps, yard waste, and other organic materials make up about 30% of what we throw away. When this organic waste decomposes in landfills without oxygen, it produces methane — a greenhouse gas that's 25 times more potent than CO2.

This is a massive missed opportunity. Organic waste can be turned into valuable products: biogas for energy, compost for soil health, and even protein for animal feed. But most cities and businesses don't have the infrastructure to capture and process organic waste separately.

The challenge is building systems that can handle the logistics of collecting organic waste before it spoils, and processing it at the right scale for different communities and industries.

Biological processes that break down organic waste in oxygen-free environments, producing methane-rich biogas for energy and nutrient-rich digestate for fertilizer. These systems can operate at scales from individual buildings to entire cities.