Good Innovation Gone to Waste

Like many business story tellers, I mostly read and write tales of startups finding their muse online. But not everyone with a brilliant innovation is fishing it out of the ethereal streams we call the internet. Some people are finding inspiration in unlikely places such as a…

I regularly attend events at New Tech Boulder so I've seen innumerable startups give their pitch. Most promote a new online service or burgeoning non-profit group. When I saw Brian Jerose of Agrilab Technologies (a member of The Unreasonable Institute) standing in front of a heap of decaying cow poo, I knew I was in for something a little different. His outfit captures the waste heat generated by happy little microorganisms living in compost and uses that heat for something useful.

I grew up on an organic beef farm, so I figured Brian and I would have quite a bit to talk about. As he explained it, by utilizing the heat off compost you not only capture otherwise wasted energy; you bypass the need to create that heat by other means. In Boulder, this means less coal burned and subsequently less carbon released into the atmosphere. Plus, by using that heat to service greenhouses (with a convenient supply of high quality soil nearby) you encourage local food production thus saving on the gas and labor needed to transport foreign produce. Even the most stringent of climate change skeptics must surely be able to appreciate the economization inherent in such a process.

My folks used to say it was the smell of money

We chatted after the event and he was kind enough to let me tag along the next day for a tour of Boulder’s premier waste management gurus: Western Disposal. There’s always something interesting to see at a dump, but Western Disposal is more like an open air mining operation than a big heap of random trash. Heavy equipment rushes about moving and separating piles of various refuse into smaller piles to be shuttled off to their respective recycling plants. Boulder citizens come and go, some dropping off large debris, some picking up truckloads of mulch.  After touring around a bit, we came to the pièce de résistance, a big steaming acre of decaying vegetable mater.

Brian lit up like a sunrise. He dug a hole in the nearest mound so our tour group could all feel the heat coming off it. He and our guide hopped up and down with excitement over the grinding and watering machinery. It was like watching two children on Christmas morning, but instead of a tree there was an enormous crushing apparatus and instead of presents there was, well…

heaps

It’s important to remember that innovation is not just occurring online. From our hospitals to our schools to the way we produce food, every aspect of our lives is being touched by the pace of changing technology.. I will continue to be inspired by those who create investment and job opportunities from discards of other industries.