Ecotone Renewables

Ecotone Renewables is a Pittsburgh-based food waste company that builds and operates ZEUS (Zero Emissions Upcycling System), a patented anaerobic digestion system housed in recycled shipping containers. Waste is deposited through a chute in compostable bags; the system grinds the material, mixes it with rain water and moves the slurry from a dosing tank into a "stomach" tank where biodegradation occurs over a period of weeks. The process is automated, including feeding, pH balancing and temperature regulation, and produces two outputs: a high-methane biogas that powers the unit itself, and Soil Sauce, a nutrient-rich liquid fertilizer positioned as an alternative to synthetic fertilizers. Units also contain sensors, tanks, grinders and camera sensors paired with a machine learning algorithm that detects, aggregates and reports what is being discarded by type and weight, which customers use to reduce waste-related costs. Digester exteriors are painted by local artists.

The company operates as a public benefit corporation and sells on-site food waste management to institutional and commercial clients, including schools, hospitals, corporate offices, restaurants, hotels, senior centers and municipalities. Named partners and customers include the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny Health Network, the University of Pittsburgh, Bryant University, Pittsburgh International Airport, Meta, Plant City X and Compass Group Canada. Soil Sauce is also sold commercially through more than 50 Pittsburgh-area retailers. Ecotone reports that each ZEUS unit diverts up to 130 tons of CO2 equivalents per year, and management describes the units as carbon sinks as well as composters.

Deployment is the company's primary internal success metric. Eight biodigesters had been deployed and operated across the Northeast as of December 2024, rising to 12 units by September 2025, half of them in Pittsburgh. Stated targets include roughly 40 new biodigesters in the year following December 2024, 10,000 systems within a few years, and eventually millions of units globally.

Founding story

The company originated in a student group spanning Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan that built the Portable Farm Aquaponics System, described as Pittsburgh's first portable farm, in downtown Pittsburgh. Dylan Lew joined as a Carnegie Mellon freshman studying materials science and engineering; his initial tasks included cleaning the fish tank and determining what to do with biogas from an early biodigester design. Concluding that aquaponics only worked at industrial scale, the group pivoted to food waste processing and to whether such a system could fit inside a shipping container, which led to Ecotone Renewables in 2019. Lew met co-founder Kyle Wyche through the Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh startup ecosystem and recruited him for operations; Lew and Elliott Bennett had been friends since childhood, and Bennett brought marketing, finance and sales experience. Additional students, including Sasha Cohen Ioannides, Vinh Luong and Catie Schrading, contributed to the first digester prototype.

Business model

Ecotone Renewables builds, deploys and operates ZEUS digesters for customer sites, handling the build and operation of the systems on behalf of clients, and separately sells the resulting Soil Sauce liquid fertilizer as a consumer/retail product. It is structured as a public benefit corporation.

Revenue comes from customer deployments of ZEUS digesters for on-site food waste processing, plus retail sales of the Soil Sauce liquid fertilizer. Management cited a roughly $600,000 run rate by the end of 2024 and a $3 million run-rate target by mid-2025.

Traction

Eight biodigesters deployed and operated across the Northeast as of December 2024, increasing to 12 by September 2025. Soil Sauce is stocked by more than 50 retailers. Reported partners and customers include the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny Health Network, the University of Pittsburgh, Bryant University, Pittsburgh International Airport, Meta, Plant City X and Compass Group Canada. Management cited a roughly $600,000 run rate at the end of 2024 with a $3 million target for mid-2025, about $1.4 million in pre-seed funding, a $3 million seed round, and a $2.4 million USDA grant.

Latest developments

As of September 2025 the company had deployed 12 ZEUS units, half in Pittsburgh, and reported $3 million in private investment and a $2.4 million USDA grant supporting manufacturing capacity and expansion into New England and Southern California. Stated goals include 10,000 systems within a few years and eventually millions of digesters worldwide.