Episode 25: Mark Brown of WastAway

Thank you to the WastAway team for making this episode possible. Host Cortney Piper had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Brown, CEO of WastAway, a green tech company that takes something the world doesn’t want – municipal solid waste – and converts it into something the world needs.

 WastAway—Waste-Away with no E—is an advanced energy leader. Its multi-patented system transforms municipal solid waste into valuable biofuels, achieving an impressive 85% landfill diversion.

 Mark has been at the helm of this company for nearly two decades, leading design, construction, and project development efforts to revolutionize waste management. Please tune in to the episode to hear more about WastAway and its new waste energy facility in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Learn more about TAEBC and WastAway.

Transcript

Cortney Piper: Welcome to Energizing Tennessee, powered by the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council. We're your number-one podcast for news about Tennessee's advanced energy sector. I'm your host, Cortney Piper. On Energizing Tennessee, we love bringing you stories and conversations about innovative solutions and companies that make energy cleaner, safer, more secure, and more efficient.

Today, we're diving into waste-to-fuel technology with a company that's truly changing the game. WastAway—that's WastAway with no E—is an advanced energy leader with a multi-patented system that transforms municipal solid waste into valuable fuel while achieving an impressive 85% landfill diversion.

Imagine turning what the world throws away into something the world needs. That's exactly what WastAway is doing. Joining us is Mark Brown, the CEO of WastAway. For nearly two decades, Mark has been at the helm of this company, leading efforts in design, construction, and project development to revolutionize how we deal with waste.

Under his leadership, WastAway has made incredible strides in creating sustainable renewable fuel that not only reduces landfill waste but also provides a cleaner alternative to traditional energy sources. I want to thank Marc and the WastAway team for making this episode possible. Keep listening to hear more about the company's pioneering technology and how it's shaping the future of waste management and renewable energy.

As always, if you like what you hear, subscribe to our channel and leave a rating or review. It helps us reach a wider audience and champion Tennessee's advanced energy sector.

WastAway is a green technology company boasting a multi-patented equipment design and processing system that converts municipal solid waste to fuel, achieving 85% landfill diversion. I'm speaking with Mark Brown, the company's chief executive officer. Mark, thanks for coming on the show. 

Mark Brown: Thank you, Cortney.

I'm excited to join you in discussing our leading-edge green technology. We transform something the world doesn't want into something the world needs, and it's great for the environment to boot. We like to say today's trash is tomorrow's fuel. And also WastAway is the beginning of the end for landfills.

Cortney Piper: This sounds like a fantastic advanced energy solution, and you have been with WastAway as its CEO for almost 20 years. So tell our listeners a little bit more about you and your time during the early days of WastAway. 

Mark Brown: Yes, well, I've dedicated my career to the design management and manufacturing and project development of solid waste conversion technology.

So I've led WastAway, as you said, for almost two decades. I do serve as chief executive officer of WastAway, but also a Bolden Corp, which is our parent corporation. My executive experience spans a variety of construction, automation, manufacturing companies through the years. And since this is the, Tennessee Advanced Energy group.

I'm very much a product of middle Tennessee. I was born in Nashville, grew up in Tullahoma and McMinnville and actually graduated from Tennessee Tech with a degree in electrical engineering. 

Cortney Piper: Great. Okay. Now let's talk a little bit about process and technology. What sets Wastaway's process apart from other waste-to-fuel technologies that are out there today? 

Mark Brown: A lot things, we have over 20 patents and so we have, Pioneered a visionary green tech waste to fuel process. Some of the things that are unique, in about 30 minutes, our technologies transform municipal solid waste, or MSW, into a versatile, sustainable, renewable product, while we achieve 85% landfill diversion.

We capture the metals, both ferrous and nonferrous, so the iron and steel, the tin cans, and the nonferrous, the aluminum, the copper, the brass, and plastics, all go for recycling. We remove the glass, the rocks, and the other inert materials and then convert the remaining waste into a sterile, carbon-rich, sustainable, engineered fuel that can be used for a variety of uses.

And our renewable negative carbon footprint products include a proven high BTU coal replacement. And this can be used for cement kilns, power plants, pulp mills, and other solid fuel users to displace the dirty coal or Petroleum coke or other solid fuels they may be using. We can also produce renewable natural gas, which is what some of our latest projects are centered on today.

We produce soil enrichment additives or compost, if you will, that can be used in nursery and horticulture and agricultural applications. Our biofuels feedstocks can be used to produce liquid fuels using gasification and paralysis. And we even can make building materials out of some of the products we produce.

Cortney Piper: Wow. This is great stuff. So, thinking about municipal waste more broadly, what are some challenges or problems communities face, and how does Wastaway address them? 

Mark Brown: And obviously. Landfills and municipal solid waste are a problem, not just across our state, but the entire nation and indeed the entire world's facing the issues.

Today there are about 1,250 landfills still operating in the U.S., but that number's being reduced every year because nobody wants to be near a landfill so we all understand that landfills are not the future. They're just a problem we're passing on to our children and grandchildren.

Cortney Piper: When you say there's an 85% landfill diversion, what does that mean for a typical municipality? 

Mark Brown: If you take the materials that are currently going to a landfill, we can take 85% of that material and beneficially reuse it. But there is a small fraction, about 15%, that would still go to the landfill.

And that's going to be primarily the rocks, the glass, the little bits of dense material. And the good thing about sending those to the landfill Is they're not going to cause any problems. They don't leak or produce gas. So even the materials we do send to the landfill are inert and safe.

Cortney Piper: Okay. And what are some of the products or biofuels that WastAway produces and how are they used? 

Mark Brown: We discussed the products a minute ago, but. Renewable natural gas is one of the new products that we're able to produce. And we're excited about the option of taking renewable natural gas is exactly like natural gas.

So it burns clean. It can be used in existing systems, but it's renewable. So it actually reduces the carbon going into the atmosphere. Whereas burning natural gas produces CO2 any CO2 produced from renewable natural gas was actually removed from the atmosphere. So we actually have what's called a negative carbon footprint with the renewable natural gas.

Cortney Piper: And we know that finding space for landfills is a big problem not only in the state of Tennessee but across the country and the globe. And so offering a solution that allows municipalities to significantly decrease the amount of material that's being sent to a location that is finite, seems like a really big win for municipalities.

In addition to, and we know this in the city of Knoxville, a lot of municipalities are starting to create climate action plan or emission reduction goals. And this solution seems like a really good one, two punch for those municipalities. One that are facing a persistent problem that all municipalities are facing. And two, especially those cities or counties that have these very specific plans to address sustainability. 

Mark Brown: Absolutely, I mean, most of us have seen a landfill at some time in our lives. A few of us have the unfortunate case of living close to one. But landfills most all of them are overflowing.

And all of them are leaking in some way. Some are leaking toxic chemicals into the water we drink. But at the very least, all of them are leaking noxious gases into the air we breathe. Landfills are one of the biggest sources of fugitive methane, which is a huge contributor to global climate change.

And siting new landfills is almost impossible. Out west landfills are typically located either way out in the desert or in some cases on Indian reservations, and they'll use trains to haul the waste hundreds of miles away. But here in the eastern part of the U.S., unfortunately, a lot of the landfills are close to communities. And so just like Murfreesboro, With the large middle point landfill, they've been forced to deal with the trucks, the trash and the odors, and it can be smelled for miles. 

Cortney Piper: Let's talk about your new waste-to-energy facility in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Give us all the details. 

Mark Brown: Yeah. The Murfreesboro plant will be our showcase plant. It's going to feature industry-leading green technologies. And the facility is a landfill answer for the city of Murfreesboro, and it will also serve as an example for other communities in the area. For 30 years now, Murfreesboro has lived with the Middle Point Landfill, which is the largest landfill in Middle Tennessee, and so it's only natural that they would take the leadership role in demonstrating a cleaner, safer, better solution for the future.

We will be dramatically reducing both the CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions thus helping to solve our overall climate change. We can process 100% of food waste, which a lot of states are starting to have to come up with special programs to separate yet another can of recycled materials.

In some communities we're working with, they have seven and eight different trash cans that they expect the consumers to sort the waste before it's disposed of and Our system is you just leave the food waste in the garbage. You don't have to drive separate trucks around to collect it. And so we're able to complete a very important recycling mission for the area by reducing contamination and cleaning up the environment.

Cortney Piper: Can you walk us through to the extent that you can a little bit about the decision-making process within the city of Murfreesboro. What sort of feedback did you hear from city officials about the need for this, what they were looking forward to? Just any insight you can share with us about that decision making process?

Mark Brown: The city of Murfreesboro has been involved in a program for, goodness, five or six years at least, planning for the eventual closing of Middlepoint Landfill and doing something more responsible with their waste. And so as they had planned for that process, maybe three years ago, if I'm remembering the timeline they had a competitive analysis where they look not only at the financial aspects of waste management, but also the environmental and the social metrics associated with it. And so they came up with a scoring rubric in a competitive situation and WastAway was scored the highest in all three categories of the various technologies they were able to look at, so it's what they call internally a triple bottom line that they analyzed and determined WastAway was the best fit for the community.

And so coming out of that initially, we jointly worked together on a feasibility study to see if the numbers would work, and we could find solutions for a true solution, be able to put together a solution that really worked in all aspects for the community. And then I guess almost a year and a half ago, we entered into a contract to start the design and permitting for the facility.

We're now trying to complete the financing piece in the next few weeks and hope to start construction early next year. 

Cortney Piper: Fantastic. Now let's talk about another topic that, that all governments love to talk about, which is economic development. So, what role does WastAway play in supporting the development of new green jobs and training in renewable energy and waste management sectors?

Mark Brown: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question because when we talk about waste processing facilities. A lot of people have in their mind long lines of people in jumpsuits having to rubbage through the garbage and pick out materials, but everything in the waste to waste system is fully automated. 

So while we are creating roughly 30 jobs in the community. These will be high skilled jobs. They will be good paying jobs. Average salary is currently estimated $100,000. So these are technical jobs. These are we're using automated equipment, so we're using robots and near infrared detection and programmable controllers. We're not paying people to push shovels and brooms.

These are highly skilled jobs working with automated manufacturing equipment. And then, to be sure it's all handled correctly, of course, Murfreesboro, as is fortunate for both of us, is only an hour from our home office. So, we will actually be overseeing operations of this plant for the city. And we'll be using our team here from the home office to oversee and manage the facility and that'll be led by primarily our engineering department and David Palmer is our vice president of engineering, and he's a nationally recognized expert in anaerobic digestion and the production of Renewable natural gas, and in fact, we kid him about it around the office, but he literally wrote the book on anaerobic digestion a few years ago when he worked with EPA.

He was one of two co authors on the what's called the biogas system operator guidebook that EPA published and is used across the country as the guiding authority, for how you should properly operate renewable natural gas facilities. 

Cortney Piper: That's a great person to have on the team, Mark. 

Mark Brown: It is.

Cortney Piper: Now, you mentioned the over 20 patents that you have on some pretty innovative technology. Would you like to talk through some of that technology a little bit more and what you're particularly excited about? 

Mark Brown: Sure. It's the WastAway system itself. We've been operating the first plant here in Warren County for over twenty years.

And this facility, we actually take the municipal solid waste straight out of the garbage trucks. As I said earlier, this is an automated process, so nobody has to sort or sift through the waste. It's loaded into the automated system, and we use our cellulators that actually convert the municipal solid waste into a safe product that can be easily handled.

As we've discussed, we pull out those items that can be recycled and sell those into the various recycling markets. And then eventually the end product from our process goes into an anaerobic digester. An, in the case of Murfreesboro, those digesters will be produced by Hitachi, which, when I think of Hitachi, I think of electronics and appliances.

But Hitachi is a much bigger company than some people realize. They started out in shipbuilding and are one of the 10 or 12 largest, corporations in Japan. And international partners in a number of projects. So they will actually be an active partner in this project, ensuring that the renewable natural gas is successful.

And beyond that, as we've moved into renewable natural gas, we've been operating digesters in Europe on a test basis for almost a year and a half now to be sure that the feedstock works well in the digesters, and all of those tests have been extremely positive. And the really cool thing about our process for making renewable natural gas, as you may know, you can capture natural gas from landfills. It's called landfill gas. But if you put the material into a landfill, it basically rots and over a period of 10 or 15 years produces methane. And they try to capture what they can, but obviously when you've got a huge mountain of garbage, you can capture some of it. But a lot of it leaks into the air, and with our process, rather than 10 years, the renewable natural gas is produced in 30 days, and it's all produced in a sealed vessel, so none of it leaks into the atmosphere, and we capture 100% of the methane that's produced in the process.

And so instead of 10 years, it only takes 30 days to complete the process. 

Cortney Piper: That is remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. And now, as a company founded in Tennessee, what advantages have you found from operating in this region? 

Mark Brown: I grew up in Tennessee, so I have a strong love for this state, but it's a great state to live in, to work in and to do business.

 Made in Tennessee means a lot for business and industry and especially now in the energy and advanced energy sectors. We're seeing more and more companies in the state, both grown in the state that are developing technology and also relocating to the state. I've been told that we're now the number one State for advanced industry job growth, that's according to the Tennessee Department of Economic Community Development.

We all understand, we love the fact there's no income tax here state and local taxes are among the lowest in the country the state has low debt, a pro business environment that's brought some of the world's biggest brands to the area and Tennessee's also an innovator in technology, green tech, and waste solutions.

And we boast a thriving advanced energy economy and WastAway's proud to be part of that leading edge work that the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council is doing across the state in the region. 

Cortney Piper: Mark, as of our last advanced energy economic impact report, We documented more than 20,000 businesses operating in the advanced energy sector that were contributing about $46 billion to our state's GDP.

So you are absolutely right. And we are proud to count WastAway as one of those companies that is not only contributing to our economy and providing great, paying jobs, but all the technology innovation and the intellectual property that comes with that we can claim as Tennessee based and Tennessee grown.

So one of our last questions here, how is WastAway positioning itself for future growth, specifically related to partnerships and advanced energy projects? 

Mark Brown: Probably the biggest thing we're working on right now we have two projects that are late stage project development and going to start construction this year.

And so that's starting two projects at the same time has been all consuming for the company. We have the project we've talked about in Murfreesboro, which we're very proud of, but we also have a virtually identical project in Bakersfield, California. And both of these projects will be diverting 85% of the waste that come to them.

They both will be accepting about 400 tons per day of incoming waste. And both will be producing renewable natural gas and significantly reducing the carbon footprint for both of these communities. 

Cortney Piper: Excellent. Mark, tell our listeners where they can find more information about WastAway.

Mark Brown: The easiest thing to find WastAway, like anything these days, is go to the World Wide Web. And our website is www.WastAway.Com. I will add, though, for trademark reasons, WastAway does not have an E in it. So it's W A S T A W A Y. So, no E in WastAway, but go to the website. We have videos. We have news updates on things that are going on.

Our communications department does a great job of adding stuff on there to keep people informed on the latest and greatest in renewable energy projects and waste diversion projects. 

Cortney Piper: No E in WastAway. As somebody who is a Cortney without a U, I can relate. So that is WastAway, W A S T A W A Y, Mark Brown, CEO of WastAway, no E.

Thank you for coming on the show. 

Mark Brown: Thank you very much, Cortney. I've enjoyed it. 

Cortney Piper: This episode was brought to you by WastAway. Thank you to Mark and the WastAway team for supporting Energizing Tennessee.

And that's our show. Thanks for tuning into Energizing Tennessee, powered by the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council, your number-one podcast for news about Tennessee's advanced energy sector. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you heard, please share it with others or leave a rating and review.

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