Meeting Recap for March 11, 2013
When Michelle Wong passes gas, she doesn’t say, “excuse me.” Bad manners? Nope. The gas she passes can power all kinds of things we want - and is made from all kinds of things we don’t want.
Wong, Chief Executive Officer of CleanWorld, was Rotary Club of Sacramento’s featured speaker Monday at the Red Lion Woodlake Inn, offering Rotarians a look at a fascinating new technology.
CleanWorld makes anaerobic digestion systems—renewable energy systems that convert food, bio waste and green waste to biogas and agricultural products. She turns effluent into a revenue stream!
(Perhaps if she were to just attach a big pipe to the State Capitol, we could eliminate taxes and solve the State’s budget problems all at once. But I digress…)
Wong and her company are obviously onto something. She says that 25% of all the material currently going into California landfills could be converted to energy and usable byproducts.
“That would be enough to power 500,000 homes,” she said. “It would also reduce emissions from landfills, which generate more greenhouse gases than automobiles.”
According to Wong, who was introduced by Past President Jon Snyder, the technology on which her products are based has caught on much faster in Europe—driven by the economics.
“They have less land than we do and their ‘tipping rates’ (the cost of dumping one ton of material into a landfill) are as much as five times what we experience here,” Wong said.
That being said, interest in CleanWorld’s bio digesters is heating up. Already this year they have installed a system at American River Packaging.
They are about to break ground on a system at Sacramento’s South Area Transfer Station and later this month will break ground on a system at UC Davis.
Wong is particularly excited by the latter because it was at UCD that the technology was developed. The new system there will have a 20,000-ton annual capacity.
And what happens to the byproducts of generating compressed natural gas from all that waste? They have started to market a line of agricultural products—fertilizers of various types.
To say that Wong is a bundle of ideas and energy would be an understatement. She is also CEO of CleanWorld’s parent, Synergex, and in her spare time, interim CEO of the Powerhouse Science Center.
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Years of perseverance paid off Monday with the induction of Jeanne Reaves as our club’s newest member. Past President Beverly Brautigam has been after Jeanne to join since the late 1990s.
President Peter Dannenfelser II “read her in.” A long-time community leader and president of her own consulting firm, Reaves was sponsored for membership by Brautigam and Susan Sheridan.
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BloodSource was the meeting sponsor Monday. Accompanying Leslie Botos were a number of guests, including a delegation from Nigeria here to study donor recruitment and blood processing.
At the head table with Botos were Dr. Etim Essien and Dr. Mabel Ekanem from the University of Uyo. Essien is an international expert on malaria. Ekanem, among other credits, is a Rotarian.
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Todd Andrews gave a brief eulogy for former RCS member Herb Greydanus, who passed away in January. Greydanus was a 24-year RCS member and an Eddie Mulligan and Paul Harris fellow.
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David DeRoos provided the thought for the day, Otto Construction (Allison Otto & Jim Craig) sponsored the pre-meeting wine reception and Elfrena Foord provided the pre-meeting piano music. To ring in St. Patrick’s Day, John McIntyre led the club in When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.