Waste Management has made an investment in Portland, Ore.-based Agilyx Corp., a company that converts plastic wastes into synthetic crude oil. Waste Management was one of six companies that provided a total of $22 million in Series B financing to Agilyx, which says that it has processed more than 1 million pounds of plastic to produce more than 120,000 gallons of crude oil.

Other companies who participated in the Series B financing were Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Total Energy Ventures International, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, Saffron Hill Ventures and Reference Capital.

“Waste Management wants to maximize the value of the materials it manages,” said Tim Cesarek, managing director of organic recycling for Waste Management, in a statement. “Agilyx’s technology complements Waste Management’s advancement of thermal chemical conversion technology platforms and provides us with a viable option for processing contaminated and difficult-to-recycle waste plastics while creating a high-value commodity.”

Waste Management’s investment in Agilyx is just the latest one that the nation’s largest waste services firm has made in a company that produces an end product from trash. Previous investments include ones in Harvest Power, which uses anaerobic digestion to produce biogas from organic waste; in Enerkem, which converts waste into biofuels; and in Terrabon, which creates high-octane fuel from food and yard waste.

RELATED ARTICLE

• "A Growing Appetite for Food Waste and Yard Waste" by Tim Cesarek

RELATED VIDEO

Overview of Agilyx (formerly Plas2Fuel Corp.)