Business Black Box

TRAILBLAZER
TRAILBLAZER.
By Josh Overstreet
Even at eighteen, Scott Harke knew
what he had a desire to do. He even
wrote a paper on it.
“I came across this paper I wrote as
a senior in high school for a scholarship,
and it was about how we didn’t manage
our resources sufficiently; how we
aren’t good stewards of energy—and
here I am at 50 doing what I wanted to
do when I was 18,” he says.
Today, Harke is the director for business
development for Divergent Energy, a
waste stream solutions company.
After moving in 1981 from
the Catskills of New York, and
graduating with a bachelors in
Industrial Management from Clemson
University, he began looking for work.
“At that point in ‘85, the economy
was horrible. I figured I would go
into banking and be an intermediary
between banks and industry, but that
didn’t work out,” he remembers.
That did not pan out however, and
due to prior experience working as a
photographer for the alumni magazine
and yearbook, Harke was hired by
Clemson as a photographer.
Realizing he would need to
move on and continue his education,
he participated in an intensive
MBA program in Venice, Italy.
Upon returning, he worked with a
technology supplying company that
transferred him to Denver, but, having
grown fond of the Greenville era,
Harke eventually returned.
At that time, a friend from Clemson
was working on start-ups and Harke
joined with him. Thus, Divergent
Energy was born.
“As we started talking about all we
could do with food waste and other
waste streams, we decided Divergent
Energy was the right place to start
developing these solutions.”
Two and a half years later,
Divergent Energy has acquired
instillations and key accounts that
have been very successful. One of the
largest is the Culinary Institute of the
Carolinas, where, after discovering
the Institute goes through 25,000
pounds of waste annually, Divergent
provided solutions for diverting their
waste streams—first installing a bulk
densifier, which takes organic waste
material and processes it into a more
useful and compact product.
“The material that comes out of
the machine is super rich, so if you
mix it into the soil, a little bit goes
a long way. It can compost really
quickly, it can be pelletized as a fuel
source, and it can be used as an animal
feed supplement.”
The chefs who oversaw the running
of the machine also began to notice
trends. Students would be somewhat
careless with what they were wasting;
as now the chefs could oversee much
of the waste going in, they were able
to identify these areas and began to
save more food waste just by being
more observant.
During this process, another
by-product of this food waste was
discovered. According to Harke, who
notes that 85 percent of organic food
waste is water. While maybe not useful
for drinking, this water can be filtered
into what is called “gray water” and is
useful for cleaning, watering, and other
utility type uses.
“As we continue growing as a
population, water will be an increasingly
precious commodity,” says Harke, “So
to be able to capture and repurpose it,
has gotten a lot of people’s attention.”
While the Culinary Institute is their
biggest success to date, there are other
avenues Divergent wants to work with.
“School budgets aren’t getting any
bigger and to be able to put a whole
solution in place, the school becomes its
own ecosystem.” By making schools selfsustaining
ecosystems, we can provide
three important benefits: environmental,
economic, and educational.
Additionally, because of the federal
mandates on ethanol usage, Divergent is
looking into being able to take “sweet
water,” or sucrose-heavy water from
organic waste, and distill it to make ethanol.
“What you’re doing is taking trash…
and creating an absolutely necessary
commodity,” he says.
Currently, Divergent Energy’s main
business strategy is to come alongside
businesses and other organizations and
help them find other means in which
they can remove their wastes.
“I guess I’m just an unrepentant
hippie,” says Harke. “It sounds corny,
but what excites me every morning
when I get up is that what we are doing
can change the world and make it a
better place.”
But aside from the desire to change
the world, Divergent Energy is still
a money-making enterprise whose
principles are also very mindful of
the economics of recycling waste into
useful commodity.
“We don’t go to businesses and tell
them to recycle just because it’s the
right thing to do; we look at it from an
economic standpoint.”
With a few successful projects,
Divergent Energy is focused on having
conversations and building relationships
to find ways in which they can partner
with either institutions or other waste
stream solution companies in order to
provide the best solutions possible.
“We want to be symbiotic, there
are some instances were its beneficial
for Divergent Energy to own that
relationship, and there are others that let
us be bolted on as part of your solution.”
At the end of the day, Divergent
Energy is working for the best possible
solutions because when it comes to
sustainability, everybody wins.
“The native Americans believed you
didn’t rule for yourself or for your kids,
but for the seventh generation,” he says.
For more from Business Black Box visit insideblackbox.com
Q4 2013 // Business Black Box
51