Ecotone Renewables turns food waste into gold with Soil Sauce

Banana peels and thrown-away leftovers can hold surprising value. Ecotone Renewables, for example, takes food waste and transforms it into Soil Sauce, a plant fertilizer.

While composting often is the first solution that comes to mind for food waste, Ecotone aims higher.

The partially Black-owned company’s goal is to divert one gigaton — that’s a billion metric tons, or about 2.2 trillion pounds — of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the next 10 years, equal to 1% of all global greenhouse gases.

“We want to provide a solution to eliminate the need for food waste to go into the landfill,” said Elliott Bennett, 25, Ecotone co-founder and chief financial officer. “Most marginalized and underrepresented communities actually live around landfills. Not only are we cleaning up landfills, but we are cleaning up communities by eliminating the waste that creates methane.”

Bennett is based in Boston, and the rest of the Ecotone team is in Pittsburgh, including fellow co-founders Dylan Lew and Kyle Wyche.

Lew and Bennett grew up in Connecticut and have been friends since they were 4. Bennett went on to Boston College and Lew went to Carnegie Mellon University, where he met Wyche, who attended the University of Pittsburgh.

According to Bennett, Ecotone began when Lew and Wyche collaborated on a project to establish an aquaponics farm, combining the raising of fish and soil-free cultivation of plants in water. The company was founded in 2020 as “one of those covid-born businesses,” Bennett said.

Today, the company has nine employees with a large presence in Pittsburgh, the location of its manufacturing hub, and Rhode Island.

“One of our natural focuses is Pittsburgh, especially, as there are so many food deserts prevalent in underserved and underrepresented communities that don’t have access to clean, green or fresh food all of the time,” Bennett said.

As a PBC, or a public benefit corporation, the business seeks to serve the people and the planet, and the profits can benefit the community. In Ecotone’s bylaws, 10% of all Soil Sauce produced is pledged to underserved and underrepresented communities.

“That is something that we are very passionate about as a team,” Bennett said. “And we ideally do partner, especially on the business and retail side, with Black and brown and other minority-owned businesses.”

One of their local partners is Soil Sisters, a plant nursery in Beltzhoover.

“We do a lot of events together,” said Raynise Kelly, Soil Sisters owner. “They are one of our best partners, and we love their story, passion and purpose. The product is great. We started off just using it on our seedlings, and then when we got into houseplants, we started using it on the houseplants.”

Kelly said they love that they can stand by the product and let customers know that if they are looking to continue caring for their plants in the same manner as Soil Sisters, they can purchase the same fertilizer.

“People really enjoy having this hyperlocal product, from fertilizer to seedling,” she said. “It’s been a great partnership. They are like extended soil brothers.”

Ecotone also has an education-focused approach, holding free community events and encouraging engagement about converting waste from landfills and the importance of being part of the local food ecosystem. On Earth Day, they had an event at the Pittsburgh International Airport where they processed the food waste from its Dunkin’ location.

Bennett takes pride in being a Black person in this space. Farming and agriculture have been on both sides of his family for a long time — his mom is French and his dad is Jamaican.

“They grew up eating organic. They grew their own fruits and vegetables; that was just part of French culture. My dad came from rural Jamaica where they had chickens on the property, and he’d go out and eat papayas and mangos from the jungle,” Bennett said. “I have always been interested in understanding where food comes from, and I’ve personally been adamant about eating as many fruits and vegetables as I can.”

Bennett is passionate about the historical testimony of cementing Black people’s contributions to farming and agriculture.

“Especially in the U.S., agriculture was predominantly Black-led,” Bennett said. “Nowadays, technology has replaced a lot of jobs, but we are very underrepresented in the agriculture and farming space. I want to represent something that is part of Black culture in a positive light.”

Tony Ciotoli is manager of City Grows, an organic garden shop in the Strip District.

“When Elliott came to me and told me about what they were doing, I got so excited. They are recycling throw-away food that would otherwise go into a landfill and turn into nothing,” Ciotoli said. “It’s exciting when you see people that excited about what they are doing.”