Micron awarded US design patent for food, cannabis waste treatment technology

Micron Waste Technologies Inc., Vancouver, Canada, announces it has been awarded United States Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) intellectual property protection for its commercial organic waste digester unit that can be used to process food and cannabis waste. Specifically, Micron’s Application No.: 29/644,928 won recognition for technological features which enable the digester to process food and cannabis waste on a commercial scale. Micron’s digester hardware is also protected by an Industrial Design Certificate of Registration from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO).

The digester is integral to Micron’s Organivore food waste processing system and Micron’s Cannavore system, which the company says is the first purpose-built green technology developed for the cannabis industry.

“We are especially proud to have been awarded two U.S. patents within the past six months—one for our innovative biotechnology formula for waste treatment—and now a second for our hardware,” Micron CTO Bob Bhushan says. “Our innovations allow Micron to deliver solutions to process waste compliantly from several target sectors—food processing; cannabis cultivation; beer, wine and spirits; and other industries that generate organic waste.”

The Organivore and Cannavore industrial-grade processing systems pulverize and render organic waste in combination with Micron’s patented blend of microbes and enzymes. As part of Micron’s closed-loop waste treatment platform, effluent from the digester is further treated to derive contaminant-free graywater that can be re-used in industrial or agricultural operations. Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in cannabis waste are further biologically treated with Micron’s proprietary formula to denature cannabinoid residues, mitigating potential discharge into the aquatic environment, the company says. Micron also says this discharged water meets municipal wastewater bylaws for effluent parameters such as those for biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), and fats/oils/grease (FOG).