Name: Bob Backoff
Business: Waste to Energy Group LLC
Headquarters: Irvine, Calif.
Industry: Energy and Natural Resources
Product/service: We develop landfill gas and biomass projects
Number of full-time employees: 2
Year begun: 2008
What was the challenge your business was facing as a result of the economy?
Our company has an exceptional process that helps municipalities generate hundreds of thousands of dollars from their landfills. We inject steam into the landfills or biomass reactors to extract methane gas. Our major challenge has been to finance our projects in a terrible economy.
What was the innovative idea you put in place?
We inject steam into landfills or biomass reactors to generate massive amounts of methane which reduces the hazardous methane that escapes into the atmosphere. We are the only company utilizing this patented method. We are one of the “greenest” of the USA-based green energy companies.
What significant milestone has this innovative idea lead to since Jan. 1, 2009?
Our patented process has given over 4,000 U.S. municipalities an answer to their landfill methane gas problems and has provided an alternative to outdated landfill process that the big waste management companies have used for decades. We have provided a tremendous solution to the waste problem that the U.S. faces.
Please explain your innovation at greater length.
Since the dawn of man the earth has been challenged with the waste that we humans have produced. In the past, man could merely throw out his/her waste and animals would scavenge the waste or it would decompose. Waste has perplexed man for centuries and now in the modern era of our planet waste is an even greater problem since in the USA the average man, woman and child each produce 2,000 pounds of waste every year! That figure may be hard to believe, but is the actual amount that we all produce.
So now, our governmental units take on the service of waste disposal and hire local waste haulers to make the waste go away. The problem is – it doesn’t! It merely goes from our trash containers to a local landfill. Governments have designated large tracts of land to turn into landfills, but the population of the USA and local cities, towns and villages has increased dramatically in the 20th and now the 21st centuries. Just because the local municipality has our trash hauled to a landfill doesn’t mean that the problem is out of sight and out of mind. We are all faced with the growing levels of trash that we cumulatively throw away and the landfills are filling up rapidly. We are on a pace to literally drown in our own trash.
In the last 50 years we have instituted recycling programs for all kinds of items which has reduced the volume of trash going to the landfill, but we are still faced with the gases that the landfill generates 24 hours a day. The methane gas a landfill generates is 22 times more damaging to our atmosphere than the CO2 that people complain about.
Now there is a solution to this problem in that Waste to Energy Group LLC is working with municipal landfills all over the USA to capture the methane generated and actually turn it into electricity, crude oil or methanol. Utilizing a patented steam injection process we are able to extract massive amounts of methane from a landfill which in turn generates thousands of dollars for the municipality. As we all know municipalities are in need of revenue and we can help them out by instituting a revenue share program with them. Our process reduces the hazardous methane gas, allows the landfill to operate for more years, provides income to the municipality and is the greenest program there is.
We also utilize a steam injected biomass reactor to process animal waste, green waste, wood chips, etc. which provides methane gas to be processed. These reactors can be sited anywhere where there is a waste stream. They can also be sited on the land that solar panels are on and provide an additional revenue source for these installations.
Waste to Energy Group LLC is a 21st Century, green renewable energy company that offers common sense solutions to waste problems that have plagued man since the beginning of time.
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Bob Backoff,
Calif.,
Irvine,
Waste to Energy Group LLC,
year begun: 2006-2010