Here’s an eye-opening fact: World population is going to rise to more than 10 billion by 2050. What this translates to is that the world has to produce 70% more food and 50% more energy. The challenge awaiting humanity is to build sustainable human habitats in the urban areas to cope with the growing population and overcome corresponding issues such as food and food waste, water, environment, and energy, among other social and public issues. “We need innovative technology, wisdom, dream, and passion for the future to tackle the challenges facing humanity,” says Dr. Suk K. Sim, president and CEO of Environment & Energy Technology (en²t, en-squared-t). "en²t has a sketch ready for sustainable human habitats in the urban cities through sustainable vertical farming that utilizes eco-friendly food waste recycling technology.”

en²t provides a sustainable and integrated solution for the issues of food, food waste, wastewater, energy, environment, and economics through ecofriendly food waste recycling technology that uses salt-tolerant mushroom strains.

Addressing the most persistent problem of food waste leading to landfill, en²t believes that the sustainable vertical farming technology will create new added values for the space in the urban cities and build infrastructure for the sustainable human habitats. In its food waste recycling technology, en²t has smartly made use of the salt-tolerant mushroom strains from natural ecosystem decomposers.

The mushroom was the ideal choice as its strains have 10,000 enzymes that decompose organics and get converted to antibiotics or other organics as natural ecosystem process.

An added factor is that mushroom does not perform photosynthesis and grows in the nature digesting organics of about 70% water concentration. Food waste is combined with cellulose such as sawdust, coco peat, and corn seed to reduce water concentration from 85% to 70%. Salty and wet wastewater mixes with mushroom compost cellulose and is digested as a nutrient by mushrooms to grow. Therefore, this eco-friendly technology does not generate salty wastewater, and thus, in this system, there is no drain pipe. en²t also has a patent technology to de-odorize food waste using effective de-odorizing micro-organisms.

All the recycling products from the eco-friendly food waste recycling technology are simply organic such as oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms, organic fertilizer, functional biofeed, biomass renewable energy, and plastic and styrofoam substitute material using extracellular polysaccharides of cultivated salttolerant mushroom strains. Sustainable vertical farm grows produce, healing herbs, flowers using organic fertilizer, and future food using bio-feed. “These products have a higher market value than any other food waste recycling technologies in the global markets and food waste is too good to be wasted,” says Dr. Sim.

The company has kept the patents and intellectual properties ready for this innovative technology. The eco-friendly technology and business will bring sustainable business for en²t's global clients with superior economic performance using value-added recycling products and franchise business model in urban cities. en²t is currently promoting FOAKE (First Of A Kind Engineering) DEMO plant in global cities to implement this innovative technology and business infrastructure.

What keeps en²t ahead of others is the battle-tested economic performance of the system. To that end, en²t's strategy is to invite strategic global business partners or investors for a 10 (ton/day) food waste recycling FOAKE DEMO plant with a sustainable vertical farming showcase. The FOAKE DEMO plant will validate system performance, plant economics and will be the testbed for the big data and AI/IoT driven iFarm- MP (integrated Farm–Management Platform) for inventory and product quality control, marketing and distribution as well as trends and financial database. en²t's innovative and game-changing technology is ecofriendly, economically beneficial, sustainable, and ultimately will impact the quality of people living in urban cities.

On an innovation spree, en²t has a sketch of new integrated solution for the sustainability. Dr. Sim sums up, saying, “Let’s build sustainable human habitats and our future together.”