Waste to Value

Justin R. Wolf
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Business

Waste to Value is a bi-weekly podcast devoted to exploring the waste-to-value economy and celebrating the innovators who are creating economic and environmental value from harmful waste streams. Across markets and industries, builders and manufacturers are achieving some remarkable things, taking everything from forestry products and fabric to agricultural waste and so much more, and redirecting them into new materials that become critical feedstocks for the very things the human species needs to live and prosper. Hosted by Justin R. Wolf, an independent journalist working at the intersection of sustainable design, regenerative materials, energy policy, and climate justice, Waste to Value connects with manufacturers, technical innovators, and business leaders who are charting a regenerative future through restorative means, and giving shape to a new, ascendent industrial revolution.  

Episodes

  1. Jul 10

    Ep.4 When a Tree Falls in the City: A new sawmill outside Boston taps the potential of urban forests

    When we think about wood products and our domestic forests that supply them, we arrive at mental images of large swaths of forestland that populate the Pacific Northwest or the Southeast; those places that provide abundances of Douglas fir and spruce and southern yellow pine, but we rarely consider urban forests. Urban forests are critical components for keeping our cities cooler and safer. Street trees, city parks, arboretums, and the like help with stormwater management, restore biodiversity, and mitigate the effects of urban heat islands. But when those urban forests are thinned and trees are felled to create more space for recreation, or to protect raised utility lines, the wood itself gets chipped or sent away to get burned for energy production.   The most recent estimates from the USDA Forest Service indicate that 46 million tons of sellable wood from urban areas is felled each year, most of which gets chipped, landfilled, or burned. There is a missed opportunity afoot; not one of those pathways – with the possible exception of biomass power generation – involves making something of tangible value that’s inversely proportional to the amount of waste being generated. The Massachusetts-based timber product manufacturer Tridome Structures is rethinking a pathway for urban wood. Very recently, the company opened a sawmill in the Boston suburb of Millis; this new subsidiary is called TimberWise. In this episode, I connect with Edward (TJ) Thompson, Tridome's co-founder and Director of Innovation, to discuss the TimberWise mill, and how this relatively small operation is changing how we manage urban forests.

  2. Jun 26

    Ep.3 Solving a Sustainability Problem: This company finds utility in unusable waste

    Supplementary cementitious materials, or SCMs, have completely transformed the global cement industry. Where Portland cement once enjoyed a near monopoly in the industry, it’s now rapidly losing market share to all kinds of blended solutions using SCMs, which replace a large percentage of the cement clinker – that’s limestone and clay, cooked in a kiln at a balmy 1500 degrees Celsius – that goes into making concrete. The biggest examples of SCMs are fly ash, which is the byproduct from coal mining, and blast furnace slag, the byproduct from steel production. There’s just one issue: the steel industry is cleaning up its own act. Instead of melting pig iron in a coal-fired blast furnace, big steel makers have made the shift to electric arc furnaces. Now, this isn’t a problem in the strictest sense; electric arc furnaces emit significantly less carbon into the atmosphere. But the slag yield from this newer, cleaner production process, creates an inferior and chemically inert SCM. It’s a new form of waste, and it has no place to go. Carbon Upcycling has a solution. The company has established a waste-to-value supply chain by turning something very few industrialists were paying attention to, into a sustainable feedstock. The company’s CEO, Apoorv Sinha, says he wants to convert industrial waste in virtually all forms into sustainable feedstocks. But you gotta start somewhere, and somewhere, in this case, is the global cement industry.

  3. Jun 12

    Ep.2 Waste is Context: Synthesizing a new kind of biochar from wastewater sludge

    Featured guest Garrett Benisch is Chief Development Officer at Bioforcetech Corporation, a Bay Area company turning organic waste into carbon negative materials. Bioforcetech promotes a few basic tenets: Stop Landfill, Protect Ecosystems, and Utilize Waste, to name just a few. That last one is important. In the company’s efforts to Fix and Store Carbon (two other tenets), Bioforcetech manufactures a distinct form of biochar called OurCarbon. Biochar is made when biomass sources like trees and plants undergo pyrolysis to yield an ashy and sterile carbon byproduct – has been used to improve soil fertility and boost agricultural yields. OurCarbon is a form of biochar. But where it comes from, how it’s produced and scaled, and what it’s used for all represent something truly new in the waste-to-value economy.

  4. May 28

    Ep.1 Solutions That Work: A conversation about carbon storage and removal technologies

    For the inaugural episode of Waste to Value, I connected with Lew Epstein, CEO of Lot21, a non-profit content platform and resource for advancing climate action across the built environment to help decarbonize the world. Lew’s environmental advocacy began decades ago with the emergence of the forestry stewardship movement and has since expanded to encompass a broader range of carbon removal solutions focused on restoring our climate. Our conversation delves into the topics of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and waste-to-value solutions, highlighting the evolution of these areas and their impact on climate action and sustainability. It explores the challenges, advancements, and applications of CDR, as well as the local and global impact of waste-to-value initiatives.

  • 4 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Waste to Value is a bi-weekly podcast devoted to exploring the waste-to-value economy and celebrating the innovators who are creating economic and environmental value from harmful waste streams. Across markets and industries, builders and manufacturers are achieving some remarkable things, taking everything from forestry products and fabric to agricultural waste and so much more, and redirecting them into new materials that become critical feedstocks for the very things the human species needs to live and prosper. Hosted by Justin R. Wolf, an independent journalist working at the intersection of sustainable design, regenerative materials, energy policy, and climate justice, Waste to Value connects with manufacturers, technical innovators, and business leaders who are charting a regenerative future through restorative means, and giving shape to a new, ascendent industrial revolution.  

Information

  • Creator
    Justin R. Wolf
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    4
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Justin R. Wolf
  • Show Website
    Waste to Value