As part of this agreement, Waste Management joins founding investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Munich Venture Partners, who also increased their investments in Harvest.
Harvest is also developing new high solids aerobic and anaerobic digestion and composting technologies, which accelerate the decomposition of organic materials to produce renewable energy that offsets the use of fossil fuels. The process creates clean biogas that can be converted into electricity, liquefied natural gas, or compressed natural gas, and also generate nutrient-rich compost products, the company said.
Harvest Power’s capabilities lie in organic waste management, from building and operating large-scale organics recycling facilities to marketing compost products. The company owns and operates food and yard waste composting facility in North America, located in Richmond, British Columbia.
Tim Cesarek, managing director of organic growth at Waste Management, said: ”We want to extract more value from the materials we manage than anyone else in our industry through new and emerging processing and conversion technologies.
”Combining Waste Management’s industry leadership and expertise in the collection and management of a wide range of segmented waste streams with Harvest’s leading technologies and industry knowledge will be key to developing new, higher value added end markets for organic materials and accelerating the growth of organics recycling across North America.”
In addition, the agreement with Harvest Power complements Waste Management’s comprehensive waste services in the areas of recycling, landfill, waste-to-energy and consulting services.
Paul Sellew, co-founder and CEO of Harvest Power, said: ”Through partnerships with leaders like Waste Management, and by designing, building, owning and operating our own facilities, we will be turning more organic waste into renewable energy and high quality compost. Our goal is to harvest the power in organic materials to create more sustainable communities, and we look forward to expanding our business with our new partner.”
