Greenbelt targets rural communities with WTE systems

Greenbelt Resources Corp., Paso Robles, California, says it has developed food waste-to-energy (WTE) technology that transforms local waste into local resources. The goal for Greenbelt's technology is to take unavoidable food waste and transforms it into an economic resource.

With this goal in mind, Greenbelt set out to develop more sustainable bioproducts specifically for rural communities that often don't have the large resources needed for food WTE technologies. Greenbelt's technology, the company says, can process feedstocks like unavoidable food waste (a portion of the crops that might otherwise rot in the field) or compostable household or restaurant garbage and produce bioproducts including edible dietary protein supplements. Other products include feed, bioethanol, organic fertilizer and distilled water.

"It's critical for everyone to work together to help rural communities rise out of poverty, and one way to do this is to provide community-scale solutions that enable residents to remain in their community," Greenbelt CEO Darren Eng says. "Borlaug Dialogues is one forum to foster this discussion. Pressing issues like food security, migration and poverty are very important to Greenbelt and our investors and are why we have focused our efforts in providing solutions to these ever-growing concerns."

Greenbelt's recent efforts have focused on the integration of feedstocks such as algae and duckweed into the ECOsystem model. The ECOsystem model is designed to take feedstocks generated or produced locally and transform them into resources that are sold and purchased within the surrounding community ecosystem.

"Greenbelt's local projects touch many people—from those producing feedstocks, to the plant operators, to the bioproduct delivery trucks, to those selling the bioproducts back into the community. In this way, Greenbelt's technology is helping communities to create wealth," Eng says.