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Reading through my 9 year old sons March 2007 issue of Popular Science I was fascinated by an article entitled "The Prophet of Garbage" about a company called Startech Environmental Corporation based in Bristol, Connecticut.
So I added it to my watch list this weekend and sure nuff its up 16%+ today. Not saying this is gonna make "quick money" but I'm in at 2.97.
A quick synopsis of what they do: reduces trash into its constituent components by using plasma energy to tear apart molecular bonds. Sounds like Sci-Fi stuff but the CEO of this company Joseph Longo (this guy has been in the garbage business for 40 years) was the inventor of the worlds first industrial-sized trash compactor. Used in most high-rise buildings today. He started looking into the plasma technology back in the 1980s. At that time it was still cheap for big cities like New York to ship garbage to landfills and no one was very concerned about the environment.
His first sale of this technology was in 1997 was to the US Army to dispose of chemical weapons. A second reactor went to Japan for processing PCBs (banned since 1977 in the US). The US government has awarded Startech almost $1million in research grants.
One of the best things is that not only can the daily garbage produced by humans be fed into this so can all of the materials already located in landfills, thus eliminating existing landfills.
Places currently or soon to be employing this technology: 1. Long Island, NY - US Energy (a trio of veteran waste-disposal executives- Troy Caruso, Paul Marazzo and Michael Nuzzi who recently formed a partnership to build the first plasma-gasification plant on Long Island) is in the process of buying six Startech converters
2. St. Lucie County, Florida ($425 million system from Geoplasma a competitor)
3. Panama, Sicmar International an investment firm in Panama is working with the Panamanian government to set up at least 10 Startech systems there
4. New York City is evaluating how this process could off-set the city's exorbitant waste costs (unfortunately this will be held-back by the well connected waste disposal industry where landfill operators are used to getting a million dollars a month out of debris)
5. The National Science Foundation is considering installing a station at McMurdo Station in Antarctica
6. The Vietnamese government is considering buying one to dispose of stockpiles of Agent Orange that the US military left behind after the war
7. Investors from China, Poland, Japan, Romania, Italy, Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, the UK, Mexico and Canada have all entered contract negotiations with Startech after making the pilgrimage to their facility in Bristol
This process also creates by-products: 1. the process generates more electricity than it uses (yes, I know that is against the laws of physics) this electricity can be sold back to the local power grid
2. the process creates syngas which can be tapped for hydrogen gas, ethanol and natural gas. (Startech has already developed a filtration mechanism that can be added onto one of their systems and can quickly convert the syngas to hydrogen)
3. an obsidian-like glass used as raw materials for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high strength asphalt
I couldn't find out much info on the 3 guys from US Energy but I like what the CEO is doing and he has an execellent background in this industry.
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Saw this article too. Looks like a good technology. I was wondering if the company was publicly traded. Thanks for the heads up, I plan on getting in on this one soon.
NEL
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Up 11% today on news I gave on February 12th, glad I bought back then...
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