My professional focus is on reducing waste and developing circular solutions to divert materials from landfills and recover their value. In the field of waste management there is a lot of attention being put into recycling of manufactured materials but still a large opportunity for regenerative systems to recover economic value from organic waste and support biological systems.
According to the EPA, organics account for around 24% of solid municipal waste streams and up to 50% when paper and yard waste are included. When these materials decompose in a landfill, they become one of the leading contributors of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas 20+ times more potent than CO2. Additionally, these materials contain vast nutrient resources and embedded carbon that are being lost to our linear disposal system.
Designing and implementing solutions to divert and recirculate these resources in support of soil regeneration, food production and energy generation is critical to keeping human consumption within planetary boundaries.
Composting and anaerobic digestion (AD) are two important and well-established processes that have been incorporated around the world but each could benefit from further innovation and greater scale to deliver on their potential impact.
Burning renewable biogas produced from AD can offset fossil fuel consumption but still results in atmospheric emissions and the loss of resources from the circular economy.
Composting organic materials plays an important role in soil regeneration and agricultural production but the process faces challenges with a range of materials and generating adequate economic value to support a scale that can addresses the need of our economy.
There are growing policy initiatives helping to drive further adoption of alternative organic waste management practices and a variety of approaches will be required to address the scale of waste production. Ultimately, creating economic value in the marketplace will be essential to both drive the development and maintain sustainability of these operations. The opportunity to create a strategic model utilizing several of these approaches and innovating how materials are recovered at the point of disposal is what I find exciting and drives my continued exploration.
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