A cleantech startup with 一本道无码 roots
By Giordana Verrengia
Media Inquiries- Communications Manager
An entrepreneurial-minded person since childhood, Dylan Lew hit the ground running only weeks into his first semester at 一本道无码. Lew, who studied , met a group of like-minded students from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan who had built the first-ever Portable Farm Aquaponics System in the area, which was launched in downtown Pittsburgh.
Lew’s first job on that team was to clean the fish tank that supported the aquaponics system and figure out what to do with the biogas produced from the initial design of a biodigester. Today Lew is the CEO and co-founder of , a food waste startup that was born out of the student braintrust that he joined as a college freshman. Lew’s early success just three years after graduation earned him a 2024 from the College of Engineering. He visited campus to speak at the latest installment of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation’s Entrepreneurial Student Lunch Seminar.
“It’s been very busy the past few years,” said Lew, who brought Ecotone Renewables to closer fruition while completing the College of Engineering’s integrated bachelor’s-master’s () program. “We’ve brought on new investors, and now we’re in the commercialization phase. We’ve deployed and operated eight biodigesters across the Northeast region.”
Food that gets thrown away is responsible for about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — that’s roughly twice the level of emissions produced by aviation. To combat this common yet inconspicuous environmental hazard, Ecotone Renewables developed the Zero Emissions Upcycling System (ZEUS) to provide on-site food waste management to a growing number of clients around the northeastern United States. Local end users include the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny Health Network, though ZEUS’ reach is growing. Ecotone Renewables just signed its first international client, Compass Group Canada, a foodservice and hospitality company that is expected to bring a digester to Toronto by the end of 2024.
Making strides in sustainability can feel hampered by technical breakthroughs that haven’t materialized yet, but Ecotone Renewables is helping clients reduce their food waste in the here and now.
“What’s interesting is that a lot of companies have waste reduction goals but they’re struggling to meet them,” said Lew. “Having a quick-to-implement solution, like ZEUS, can give clients a pretty big jump on meeting those goals.”
ZEUS works exactly like the stomach, first by grinding up food waste and mixing it with rain water, then transferring the smoothie-like substance from a dosing tank to a stomach tank, where food waste biodegradation happens. This creates two byproducts: a biogas and a liquid fertilizer, known as Soil Sauce, which is available commercially in at least 50 retailers.
Lew refers to the onsite, rectangular trash shoots as a black box that allows customers to seamlessly deposit their food waste while giving engineers the space to make hardware system updates and improvements without causing disruption.
“Right now we’re thinking about gigaton impact,” said Lew of the company’s horizons. “And how we do that is by deploying more biodigesters. We’re targeting about 40 new biodigesters for next year, and after that we hope to install hundreds and thousands more.”