The Tough Tech problem we are solving
Landfilling has become a globally persistent problem. In the US alone, every year, 30 million tons of food and organic waste goes directly to the landfills, releasing large quantities of methane and leachate. In addition to that, there are other types of organic waste (such as pig and cow manure) that cannot be landfilled on a large scale, thus causing major environmental concerns. The underlying problem for this waste mismanagement crisis is the lack of profitability for the current recycling technologies (composting and anaerobic digestion), which limits their scalability. Valorization of waste to value-added chemicals using fermentation has recently gained attention as a solution to this problem. However, the current valorization methods are limited in scope due to the difficulties of engineering microbes that can deal with the heterogeneous nature of organic waste. As a result, most of the waste valorization projects have focused on limited types of input waste and output products.
About our solution
At Polyose Bio, we aim to shift the paradigm and develop a fermentation process that is agnostic to the input waste and can produce a wide range of high-value chemicals at a low cost. We do this by combining insect farming with microbial fermentation. We call this novel concept the “next generation biorefinery”, which is both profitable and waste-agnostic, and allows us to massively scale our waste processing capacity and make a meaningful impact on solving the landfilling crisis. Our technology can revolutionize biomanufacturing industry across multiple sectors (from food and cosmetics to pharmaceutical and energy) by removing agricultural products from biomanufacturing supply chain and instead using organic waste as the sole input raw material. By decoupling biomanufacturing from agriculture, we can also improve the global food security, while saving significant amounts of CO2e emissions, water, and land usage.