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This future is not as far-fetched as you might think. This vision is now within our grasp. It can actually happen. The HORSE is here to help us but it needs our help.
I always love it when, at the most unexpected time and place, you meet someone that impresses. That is what happened to me a couple of months ago at a garden party. Within minutes of walking up to this person, expecting to exchange niceties and move on, I found myself immersed in conversation about our mutual passion - the environment. No, we didn't agree on the things we discussed, but rather challenged each other, arguing with knowledge our different perspectives. Mind you, our opinions weren't that far apart. We were both quoting from the same book and eating from the same basic table. We just saw things through a different lens. I can't speak for him, but I grew in perspective because of this chance encounter.
His name is Edouard Stenger.
In 2008, his blog was nominated as one of the ten best international blogs on environment in the Blog do Planeta, a leading Brazilian blog.
More recently (2014) he has been featured for several months in the SustMeme Climate Change & Energy ranking. This is a list of the ” Top 500 influencers and players active on Twitter in Climate Science & Forecast, the Carbon Economy, Emissions, Clean, Green & Renewable Energy, Generation and Efficiency. ” —
I'm so glad our paths crossed at that party. If not for that fortunate encounter you would not be reading the following.
Back to the Future may be fictional, but the machine that converts food scraps into energy is a reality because it has just been built in Seattle. This is a living machine that eats food scraps and makes energy and plant food using microbes with zero waste. It’s called the HORSE. It’s portable. It’s affordable. It creates jobs and independence from fossil fuel energy and landfilling. Impact Bioenergy is the core technology provider, designer, builder, and supplier of the HORSE digester. "Enabling Food Waste to Food Resource" CSB is the service end of a strategic partnering program that helps remove barriers to market and deploy this transformational technology in different locations. It is a partnering program between organizations such as food banks, schools, restaurants, breweries, distilleries, markets, urban farmers, gardeners, and other for-profit or non-profit ventures. CSB (Community Supported Biocycling) is a fresh model for transforming food waste into renewable energy and organic fertilizer. We develop and deploy hyper-local hubs, starting in Seattle, WA, that challenge the notion of waste management centered on distributed pick-up and centralized processing. This is how Henry Ford conceived the Model T. This is how Doc Brown conceived the Flux Capacitor. They inspired us. Ford's vision was a horseless carriage constructed of the “best materials, by the best people available, using the simplest designs that technology can devise”. Our vision is a HORSE with the same characteristics. Now a century later we are taking it up a notch with biomimicry – a machine designed to behave like nature intended. The future is now! In the year 2015! This is a technology that can divert waste and create energy off-grid at the same time.And I must say, the HORSE does not horse around either. Just take a look at the benefits and impressive statistics.
The benefits:
It eradicates curbside garbage pickup and the carbon emissions associated with transport.
It creates a shared carbon-negative transportation model for local use: less trucking + no landfilling + renewable energy projection.
It's decentralized, it's portable and it's affordable.
The stats:
It will consume 25 tons per year of food scraps, beverages, fat, and paper products. It can create 5,400 gallons per year of liquid fertilizer + up to 37 MW-hrs of raw energy. As renewable gas that’s 125 Million BTU per year (4.3 MW-hrs of this energy is electrical output). The system also has accessory valves for BBQ grills, fire pits, lights, and ovens. How cool is that? Here is what that means in everyday terms. With the HORSE: every bit of our bioresources are recycled and utilized locally. This includes all the nutrients, energy, water and carbon locked up in food waste. In addition to a waste solution, the process mitigates GHGs and lowers air and water pollution, all while improving soil fertility for farmers and investing in regenerative living communities. This link below gives you a sneak preview at their Integrated Food energy System (IFES)Integrated Food Energy System by amaioccouw on Sketchfab
Their crowd sourcing goals are:
to both connect like-minded people and to raise enough money to build a containerized version of the HORSE. The one you see below is going to Surrey, British Columbia! Our Canadian friends will enjoy the first one! Now let me ask you a couple of questions. If you're a businessperson why would you pay around $200 a ton to dispose of a ton of waste when you could instead create a $700 a ton resource? That just doesn't make good business sense. Instead, by taking advantage of the HORSE you're bottom line wins, the community wins and the environment wins too. Win, WIN, WIN!And after looking into this project, I have to ask why anybody that purports to care about the environment would not support this project? That doesn't make sense either.
Click here to help!
"Jan Allen, P.E., CMQ/OE leads Impact Bioenergy Inc., the core technology provider, designer, builder, and supplier of the HORSE digester.""Srirup Kumar, MBA leads CSB, the social enterprise that helps remove barriers to deploy this transformational technology in different locations." He will make himself available to field questions today in comments so ask away.
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