A familiar company to Cochrane is setting up its first office and it plans to make the town its ‘ground zero.’
Eco-Growth Environmental Inc., an environmental company born in Calgary, has established its headquarters on Railway Street – a move which its staff say is not only going to help with the green causes in Cochrane, but will also help boost the economy by creating jobs.
“We just intelligently look at waste and figure out what to do with it instead of going to landfill,” said Glen Smith, a sales representative with the group.
Most in town might know the company as Executive Mat Service Ltd., a company used throughout the town and neighbouring Calgary to wash front entrance mats of businesses and replace them with new ones every few weeks.
But one of the first things you should know about the company is that it is up to far more than just laundering – they have an industrial plant in Calgary with uniquely-built technology that reduces the amount of waste ending up in the landfill.
Walking through the Calgary-based industrial plant is by some standards impressive and by every measure Dr. Seuss inspiring.
Throughout the plant are inventions, developed by the company, that take care of everything from separating toxic waste from towels, a machine that cleans, dries and rolls entrance mats, to a machine that processes organics into a form that could be used for energy - the Thermal Vacuum Reactor (TVR).
One machine the company invented separates the coffee grains from the plastic of the Keurig disposable coffee packages. The plastic is then processed in the TVR machine while some of the grains are put to use in the Eco-Growth’s gardens. In the front entrance of the Calgary plant is a living wall entirely planted in coffee grains instead of soil.
Smith said the founder and CEO of Executive Mat and Eco-Growth, Kim Caron, is in some respects an inventor in that he looks for ways to improve the efficiencies of the company as well as reduce their carbon footprint.
He works with a team of engineers to build the right technology and then partners with businesses that may benefit from the waste diversion.
“His whole mentality is of nothing going to waste,” Smith said. “He labels himself as an economist, but he was also one of those guys who paid for curb-side recycling way before it was cool.”
Eco-Growth first made itself known to Cochrane in its earlier stages back in 2013 during a pilot program, which included Cochrane Fire Services, the RancheHouse and FCSS. The project involved supplying paper towels and then collecting the used ones and bringing the material back to the Executive Mat plant in the city.
The six-month program reduced the number of pick ups by waste services by 26 trips while also saving the organizations the fee – the company collected the used paper towels free of charge. Additionally, approximately 2,200 pounds of CO2 landfill (methane equivalent) emissions were reduced during the pilot project at the RancheHouse.
Even more interestingly, Smith explained the paper towels were then converted into a biomass using the TVR machines, which break down organics including paper, cardboard, plastics and food into a biomass. Another piece of their unique equipment will convert that biomass into a bio fuel, which then gets fed to their boiler system to heat the water in their launder operation.
“Before we got onto that program all of that hand paper would end up in the landfill essentially so this was one of our waste diversion strategies,” said Greg Barsi, town facilities manager.
Smith explained the company’s vision for Cochrane now is an expansion of the pilot project and hope to get the TVR machines in place in Cochrane businesses, schools and elder care facilities.
“We’d like to use Cochrane as a launchpad for this technology,” Smith said. “We would donate a boiler system to the town of Cochrane possibly for the Eco Centre. We could take all the waste from those businesses and whoever else from the town that wanted to engage with us and then use the waste stream from those businesses to heat the Eco Centre because they pay for that gas cost to run that building now so it would be great savings for the people of Cochrane.”
One of the most important aspects of the waste diversion is the reduction of methane gas creation, which contributes to greenhouse gases.
“Whether it’s food waste, wood waste, tree- or plant-based, paper, cardboard, when we put that stuff in a landfill, what happens in a landfill? They usually bury it. And when you bury that in a landfill, you don’t let the oxygen get to the material and that’s whats called anaerobic digestion,” Smith explained, adding that anaerobic digestion turns that material into leachate and methane gas. “Methane gas is typically 23 times more harmful than just normal CO2 if it would just naturally decompose in an air environment.”
The company has similar projects in Calgary involving food waste from hotels and restaurants. In these projects, partnering businesses acquire Eco-Growth technology on site – meaning all of their food waste is dumped into a machine which converts it into a biomass and then is picked up by the company and taken back to the plant again for the use of energy in their system.
In Regina, all the biomass collected by hotels and restaurants in the area go towards heating their YMCA pool.
While many businesses don’t produce enough biomass on their own to heat a system, Smith said it is a possibility.
The company has plans in the works to open across the nation including in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.
