The mission of ESR is simple
and straightforward: to take a stream of waste and
transform it into a beneficial resource that made be
utilized in the local or global marketplace. Our
company motto "Making Waste Our Greatest Resource" defines
who we are as a company, is manifest in our intellectual
property, and reflects our sustainable business practices
since the beginning. Our founding officers are focused
on one long-term goal: the total elimination of
landfill. The bioconversion technologies division of
the company simply takes that concept and applies it to the
organic components of trash, using biological means of
waste reduction to product valuable end-use products.
WHAT IS PROTA™CULTURE?
Prota™Culture is a enhanced
compost methodology similar to VermiCulture (redworm
cultivation), but can be distinguished from the
aforementioned by a closer examination of its etymological
origin. The first part 'prota' hails from the identical
Greek root which translates literally as "of primary
importance". In this particular case, what is 'of primary
importance' are molecules, specifically the proteins and
lipids found in the food source. Instead of breaking down
and degrading these valuable molecules into humus, which
normally occurs in traditional composting, they are
recaptured and recycled into living , reusable biomass.
"Culture" stem from the medieval latin Culturare
which mean to tend
or cultivate. Instead of a farm or soil, the object of
cultivation in Prota™Culture is a beneficial organism or
sustainable process.
HISTORY OF
PROTA™CULTURE & THE BIOPOD™
Back in Belgium in the year
1986, Paul Olivier had developed a dense medium drum to
sort a variety of root vegetables such as potatoes and
carrots. This separator proved to be so accurate, that a
huge opportunity appeared in 1990 to separate and recycle
automobile and industrial waste. This carrot separator on
waste materials had, indeed, found its true home, and it
completely transformed the waste recycling industry in
Europe.
The next step was to apply this
technology to residential waste free of food waste. In 1995
several trials were conducted on 30,000 tons of MSW, and
once again, the results were amazing. A trash bin free of
food waste separated with roughly the same ease and
accuracy as an automobile, a refrigerator or an old
computer. But what then does one do with source-separated
food waste?
During that same year, while
visiting his sister in Louisiana, Paul told her that he was
looking for a creature that could eat and recycle food
waste. She then showed him the compost bin in her back
yard, and there he saw thousands of grubs, some as long as
an inch, eating food waste and reducing it to almost
nothing within a period of just a few hours. Immediately he
went to a local grocery store and bought some fresh
vegetables. He threw them in his sister's compost bin, and
when he saw these grubs devour a raw Irish potato in less
than six hours, he knew that he had found everything that I
was looking for. But he had no idea what this creature
could be.
He collected a few grubs and
brought them to an entomologist in Belgium who identified
them to be the larvae of the black soldier fly. A quick
search on the Internet brought up the name of Dr. Craig
Sheppard, who, at that time, had already devoted over 15
years of research to this insect. A year later Paul visited
Dr. Sheppard who explained in detail the amazing life cycle
of the black soldier fly.When Paul understood the migratory
instinct of mature pre-pupae, he then set about designing
several types of bins to assist them in their migratory
effort. Most bins that he had designed were too bulky, too
complicated, too costly and oftentimes, or too messy to
warrant mass production.
However, while traveling in
Vietnam in the year 2000, Paul met the famous entomologist,
Dr. Tran Tan Viet. Paul asked Dr. Viet to experiment with a
newly patented vessel that Paul had devised to coax
migrating larvae to self-harvest into a collection bucket.
When Paul saw that the larvae were able to exit this simple
device within a matter of minutes, he commissioned a
roto-molding factory in Saigon to make 12 prototypes that
he shipped to Louisiana and tested there for over three
years.
During this time in Louisiana
Paul experimented with just about every type of putrescent
waste imaginable: cow waste, swine waste, rabbit waste,
horse waste, chicken waste, slaughter house waste,
vegetable waste and, of course, food waste from his own
table and from local restaurants. The larvae easily
digested and recycled of all of these problematic waste
materials.In 2006 he moved to Vietnam so that he could be
close to the factory that had made the prototypes, and in
2007, with the help of Karl Warkomski and Paul's son,
Robert, many new features were added to the device that
eventually bore the name of Biopod.
