An Important Message to Food Companies and Their Investors: Stop Paying to Landfill Waste

Despite ESG goals and investor pressure to go green, some of the largest food companies in the U.S. continue to landfill tons of organic waste every day. Rather than getting paid for their waste by recyclers who make environmentally friendly products from scraps, many of these organic-waste generators still pay to dump this material, confounding investors and contradicting corporate environmental targets. In today’s carbon-conscious climate, this behavior must change. South Carolina-based Green Energy Biofuel stands ready to facilitate this revolution.

Green Energy Biofuel was founded nearly 15 years ago as Midlands Biofuels, a small, local grease collector and biodiesel producer operating in South Carolina’s Midlands region. Over the years, the company has steadily and responsibly grown into a vertically integrated recycler of all things organic.

Green Energy Biofuel’s vast recycling capabilities are possible thanks to:

• Multiple waste-processing plants in South Carolina and Tennessee designed and permitted to handle high volumes of virtually any liquid organic stream, including wastewater
  

• A composting facility, ReSoil, at which any solid organic waste can be properly turned into value-added soil amendments
  

• Specialty, capital-intense equipment needed to transport and process these materials into, out of, and around the facilities
  

• A growing and knowledgeable staff
  

• Forward-thinking leadership
  

• A wide array of cleaning and pumping services
  

• And its newest capital investment, a game-changing de-packaging unit to salvage organic food products such as individually packaged condiments

With the recent addition of its de-packaging equipment and the necessary engineering, infrastructure and equipment to feed the unique machine, process the inputs, empty the unit, and transport the organic and plastic waste in and out—plus the wherewithal to sustainably utilize or recycle the resulting materials—Green Energy Biofuel is now a 100 percent vertically integrated organic waste recycler. Even the plastic waste from de-packaging is recycled locally.

“We are the only company east of Texas that owns de-packaging equipment like this,” said BioJoe Renwick, founder and CEO of Green Energy Biofuel.

As such, Green Energy Biofuel is prepared to assist food companies become more sustainable, lower their carbon footprint, and assure investors they are reducing their impact on climate change, all while cutting costs or creating new revenue streams.

“We are sustainability, and we’re breaking the mold as to how this industry works,” Renwick said. “These organic wastes don’t have to go to a landfill.”

Recovered fats, oils and greases are processed by Green Energy Biofuel and sold to manufacturers of biodiesel, renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel, and marine biofuel. Solid organics, including raw meat, are composted at ReSoil. The company also recently obtained a wastewater permit at its large Aiken, South Carolina, recycling plant.

“Any waste liquid can go through the plant, now that we have our wastewater permit,” Renwick said. “We didn’t have that three weeks ago.”

In addition, Green Energy Biofuel fully automated its Aiken processing facility last year.

To add to its growing truck fleet, Green Energy Biofuel recently purchased 16 van trailers to haul dry organic waste as well as roll-off trucks and containers to haul loose waste streams. For high-volume liquid organic waste transportation, the company has 18 railcars in rotation—soon to be 20. In January alone, Green Energy Biofuel sold 3 million pounds of biobased feedstock out of its Aiken plant.

In the age of the circular economy, the days of paying to landfill waste when it can be repurposed at a cost-savings, or while generating new revenue, are coming to an end. “After all, if you’re landfilling your waste, are you really green?” Renwick asked. “If you can’t recover organic waste oil, then how green are you?”

Contact Green Energy Biofuel today to learn more about how the company can help your food operation become more sustainable and save money.