Waste Management continues to build its reputation in the development of alternative energy with the announcement that they have partnered with Harvest Power to expand next generation organics recycling facilities across the United States and Canada. Waste Management now joins founding investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Munich Venture Partners, as investors in the project.

The largest food and yard waste composting facility in North America, located in Richmond, British Columbia, is owned and operated by Harvest Power. In addition to building and operating large-scale organics recycling facilities, the company is also developing several high-solids aerobic and anaerobic digestion and composting technologies which will accelerate the decomposition of organic materials to produce renewable energy or biogas. Once the biogas is formed, it can be converted into electricity, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and into high quality, nutrient-rich compost products.

In a release today, Tim Cesarek, Managing Director of Organic Growth at Waste Management said, “We want to extract more value from the materials we manage than anyone else in our industry through new and emerging processing and conversion technologies. Combining Waste Management’s industry leadership and expertise in the collection and management of a wide range of segmented waste streams with Harvest’s leading technologies and industry knowledge will be key to developing new, higher value added end markets for organic materials and accelerating the growth of organics recycling across North America.”

North America generates over 180 million tons of organic waste each year and is a valuable resource for the production of renewable energy.

“Through partnerships with leaders like Waste Management, and by designing, building, owning and operating our own facilities, we will be turning more organic waste into renewable energy and high quality compost,” added Paul Sellew, Co-Founder and CEO of Harvest Power. “Our goal is to harvest the power in organic materials to create more sustainable communities, and we look forward to expanding our business with our new partner.”