The latest local startup company to arrive at an incubation program offered by Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) is converting food waste into fertilizer for plants.
Ecotone Renewables joins a half dozen other local startups that have partnered with the airport's xBridge innovation platform, which took off in 2020 to give budding companies the opportunity to validate their products and receive feedback on them. The airport, in turn, gets the benefit of implementing the region's emerging technologies into its operations.
This latest partnership has Ecotone taking about 500 pounds of stale donuts, coffee grounds and other food waste every week from the Dunkin’ Donuts concession store located near the airport's security checkpoint and converting it into about 50 gallons of its "Soil Sauce" fertilizer, which is then sold to farmers or home gardeners across 50 retail locations.
Ecotone is able to do this with the use of its on-site Zero Emissions Upcycling System (ZEUS), a repurposed shipping container consisting of pipes and tanks that can perform an advanced method of composting at scale and autonomously. The whole process is powered by the biogas that's generated as a byproduct of the system.
"It costs money to haul food waste to landfills, and we are instead taking those otherwise lost nutrients and revenue and putting them back into the food system," Dylan Lew, CEO and co-founder of Ecotone, said in PIT's Blue Sky News publication. "This all happens within a 15-mile radius and helps strengthen our local food system while improving long-term soil health."
Added Cole Wolfson, director of xBridge: "We were very excited to get Ecotone’s digester here because it offers solutions to multiple challenges for us. Their vision of sustainability and commitment to the community align with our values, and we think this technology has incredible potential."
Ectone joins British Airways' parent company IAG and remote control-operated vehicle developer Mapless AI Inc. as the latest firms to become participants in the xBridge program.
