Waste=Revenue Roundtable

A collaboration of E4S and Cuyahoga Valley Initiative (CVI)

Goals of the Waste=Revenue Roundtable

• Create business opportunities from waste or by-products
• Document triple bottom line benefits from these business opportunities
• Develop the network of business leaders who turn waste into revenues and connect them to businesses that create waste.
• Discuss the viability of promoting industrial ecology or industrial symbiosis as a way to bring economic, environmental and social prosperity to the Cuyahoga Valley

The Waste=Revenue Roundtable was created in January 2006 in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Cuyahoga County Planning Commission and E4S as part of the CVI Regeneration Zone Project facilitated by RMI. We started this roundtable in January 2006 by inviting several leaders from businesses located in the Cuyahoga Valley or linked to E4S Network that already valued turning waste into revenue within their organizations.  What we did not know at the time was if we could find opportunities between businesses, turning one business`s waste into another business`s raw material. 

Over the last year we have attracted leaders from more than 13 businesses to the table to get to know each others operations and find projects that will have triple bottom line impact.  They have identified over 20 potential matches from a list of over 40 materials (by-products or wastes) that they would like to sell. The group has made a couple of matches and they are working on one project with the City Water Department that may create new jobs in the Cuyahoga Valley. 

In January 2007 the Generation Foundation funded a business plan for the Roundtable that will result in a world-class model of industrial ecology in the Cuyahoga Valley and a project manager position at E4S that will help commercialize one of the most promising Roundtable projects.

If you are interested in learning more about the Waste=Revenue Roundtable, please call Holly at 216.451.7755 or email at holly@e4s.org.  You can also read about the Regeneration Zone Project and the start-up of the Waste=Revenue Roundtable on the RMI web site.