Why do food scraps have to be waste?
At WISErg, we see a better way. We're reinventing traditional food waste management by harvesting the nutrients from today's food scraps to create organic fertilizer that grows tomorrow's food. What we doThe Challenge
Traditional approaches to managing food waste — landfilling, commercial composting, and anaerobic digestion — are wasteful and environmentally unfriendly. Though some solutions effectively divert food from landfills, they still waste the valuable nutrients available in that discarded food. And in the process, these methods create odor, greenhouse gas emissions, runoff, and pests.
In addition to the environmental impact, the inefficiencies in today’s solutions are leading to increased regulation and increased costs for grocers and other food service facilities.
OUR SOLUTION
WISErg is focused on creating a revolutionary solution for diverting food scraps from landfills, composters, and digesters.
It starts by using a WISErg Harvester to capture the nutrients in the food discard stream — one grocery store, cafeteria, and restaurant at a time. Once stabilized in the Harvester, materials are transferred to a nearby WISErg facility, where they are processed into fertilizer.
HOW IT WORKS
It starts by placing WISErg Harvesters at grocery stores, restaurants, and other food service facilities. The Harvester is an easy-to-use machine that ingests and processes food scraps in an odorless, pest-free, self-contained system.
The Harvester’s Nutrient Recovery System captures and stabilizes valuable nutrients from the food scraps — nutrients that would otherwise be wasted. Unlike traditional systems, the Harvester prevents food scraps from putrefying. It is this innovation that significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, odors, and pests, while still retaining maximum nutritional value from the organic materials.
Following the nutrient recovery process, the resulting material is transported to a nearby WISErg facility where it is processed into liquid fertilizer that is approved for use on certified organic crop production.
In addition to improving traditional food waste management, our process provides several other benefits:
The Harvester captures usage statistics and records total weight of food scraps from each cost center so that it’s easy to identify and track sources of waste, facilitating overall food waste reduction.
The Harvester is ahead of the food waste regulation curve, providing a comprehensive means of complying with new regulations coming into effect.
In addition to improving traditional food waste management, our patented technology provides several other benefits. Nutrients harvested from Harvester food scraps are refined into a liquid fertilizer that is approved for use in certified-organic crop production.