A new process is turning food waste that would end up in landfills, into natural gas and other valuable by-products instead.

Organic waste makes up a huge proportion of all municipal waste, with around 17% of global food production going to waste at the retail, restaurant, or household level. But what if that food wasn’t all wasted? What if some of it could be turned into renewable energy? That is the question being answered by a clean-tech startup.

The startup has designed a modular system for breaking down organic waste to generate renewable energy and other useful by-products, such as fertilisers and biodegradable plastics. The company’s technology uses a combination of chemical and microbial processes, which can be located at source and easily scaled.

The flagship product is currently under development. When complete, it will allow a 40% increase in the production of renewable natural gas from anaerobic digestion plants. It will also be capable of being retrofitted, and the company has identified more than 15,000 anaerobic digester plants that could benefit from this retrofitting.

The young company secured €4.1 million in a 2022 seed funding round. The investment is being used to scale up the company’s technology and enable global deployment, with an initial focus on Europe and North America.