Solutions

Each year plants – including food crops, trees and other types of vegetation – draw enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to offset up to a third of the world’s carbon emissions.

But when plants die or are used and discarded as waste they decompose and release that carbon back into the atmosphere as methane.

Canada generates over 35 million tonnes of food waste each year, much of which ends up in landfills. Landfills are unhealthy environments that produce noxious odours, liquid leachate, air pollution, and food for scavengers. Landfills also produce significant quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas up to 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Methane from landfills represents 8% of total GHG emissions globally, yet it provides little to no economic benefit.

Our solution to this problem is to convert organic waste into a stable form of biocarbon (sometimes called biochar).

Biocarbon can be produced from almost any type of organic matter. It is chemically stable and can sequester carbon for a very long time.

Once produced, biocarbon has many applications in agriculture, sustainable construction, manufactured goods and green infrastructure projects.