Industrial Symbiosis

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ispgrants@commerce.wa.gov

Innovative ways to divert and capture industrial waste for reuse and transformation. 

In 2025, Commerce invested over $3.25 million in funding awards to 11 grant recipients for industrial symbiosis projects spanning as many counties across the state. Along with the matching funds invested by each project, this reflect $6.5 million of industrial symbiosis work throughout Washington. The FY 2025 grant awardees include:

• Angmartek: $231,693 award to develop a regional waste data and communication technologies platform to facilitate reuse of waste streams across industries (King County).
• Biomethane: $153,750 award to develop improved regional organics separation to produce renewable natural gas through anaerobic digestion (Spokane County).
• Center for Sustainable Infrastructure: $323,755 award for facilitation work with community partners in four counties to develop industrial symbiosis projects (Clark, Chelan, Clallam, and Spokane Counties).
• Composite Recycling Technology Center: $150,000 award for research and development of multiple scrap waste streams diverted from regional industries to be able to manufacture into a durable construction building block (Clallam County).
• Corumat: $319,159 award to demonstrate the feasibility of processing organics waste together with bioplastic food packaging resulting in lactic acid used for producing bioplastic packaging (Benton County).
• Delivery Stork: $154,600 award to integrate biochar pyrolysis into composting operations to maximize the processing of diverted disposable diaper waste (Thurston County).
• Hyas Food Group: $452,091 award to design a co-located food manufacturing facility utilizing the waste heat energy generated by adjacent agricultural facility (Benton County).
• Pure Blue Tech: $368,952 award to pilot the Membrane Element Re Center to recover, recycle, and remanufacture used spiral wound polymeric membrane elements from industry (Whatcom County).
• Refugee Artisan Initiative: $322,252 award to recover and transform hard to recycle large scale advertising plastic waste into marketable circular products, includes workforce skills training (King County).
• Simonpietri Enterprises: $300,000 award for a feasibility engineering study to develop a co-located solid waste to fuel processing facility to produce renewable natural gas for adjacent port users (Pierce County).
• Tidal Vision Products: $475,700 award to divert biomass waste from commercial seafood processing to be transformed into clean chemistry biopolymers used in various applications (Grays Harbor, Whatcom, and Pacific Counties). 

Established in 2021, these grants support collaborative projects advancing the circular economy, funding efforts to find beneficial uses for industrial waste. Through this program, Commerce funds innovative efforts ranging from research and development to on-the-ground implementation. These competitive grants serve as a catalyst for transforming industrial waste such as heat, energy, water, biomass, and materials, into added-value resource for beneficial use by industry.

Fiscal Year 2024 Grantees

Commerce has funded the following projects, from research and development to implementation, in Year Two of the program:

• Cascadia Produce (Auburn) – $250,000 to establish a retail rejection hub and distribution center for rescued food, and develop an online marketplace to serve as a market outlet to an expanded number of organizations with direct access to rescued food. Additionally, they will explore whether delivery of case quantities of rescued product can be implemented in a cost-effective, self-sustaining way to support ongoing logistics. Project partners will include Cedar Grove and Seattle Good Business Network.
• Qualterra (Cheney) – $206,857 to turn downstream material from Washington industries into a useful biochar product to bolster crop and soil health. The study aims to further cultivate symbiotic relationships with industries aiming to recycle biomass waste streams, as well as with growers and farmers seeking to produce crops in a profitable and environmentally sustainable way. Additionally, the pyrolysis of these industrial waste streams will serve as the basis for generating renewable energy utilized to power the greenhouse where the biochar trials are conducted.
• Waste Loop (Leavenworth) – $157,326 to further develop the Wenatchee Valley Reuse Innovation Center (RIC), a facility dedicated to promoting and facilitating the reuse of materials from construction and agricultural industries. The primary goal is to promote a circular economy by diverting waste from landfills while encouraging the repurposing or refurbishment of materials into beneficial reuse through direct resale or value-added production.
• Washington State University (Pullman) – $235,817 to manufacture biochar from waste biomass such as forestry residues and municipal biosolids, and incorporate it into concrete to develop durable, carbon-negative alternative for the construction sector. Diverting waste biomass to beneficial use (biochar as building materials) in concrete aims to stimulate the local economy and create jobs while mitigating climate change.

Inaugural Grants – Fiscal Year 2023 and 2022 Grantees

Commerce is funding new and exciting efforts through the first year of the program ranging from research and development to on-the-ground implementation:

• • Inland Empire Paper (Spokane), Qualterra (formerly NuPhY) (Pullman), and Washington State University are collaborating to improve soil health with biochar and fly ash as soil amendments to increase crop yields.
  • Washington State University is testing biochar waste from the Kettle Falls Power Generating Station as a filter medium to remove odorants from municipal compost.
  • The City of Pasco is exploring the beneficial reuse of food processing wastewater through an algae denitrification system that can reduce nitrate levels in wastewater while generating a value-added product.
  • Myno Carbon (Bainbridge Island) will not only create biochar and capture the biogas, but also explore the capture of CO₂ using crushed basalt to create a liming agent beneficial to soil health.
  • Impact Bioenergy (Vashon Island) will deliver renewable natural gas (RNG) to a local food manufacturing plant and capture waste heat from the facility to manufacture certified organic dry fertilizer.

Capitalizing on new opportunities.

Businesses, public utilities and other organizations throughout Washington state are expanding existing technologies for the beneficial reuse of industrial waste, while others are starting new and innovative efforts:

• • Beta Hatch, Cashmere, WA – Applies waste heat from nearby businesses to grow meal worms for livestock feed.
  • Columbia Pulp, Starbuck, WA – Uses crop stubble to make recyclable food containers.
  • Cosmo Specialty Fibers, Cosmopolis, WA – Recognizes the value of its lignosulfonate (red liquor) waste, and is experiencing success in finding customers outside the state.
  • Public utilities – Specifically, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), are a longtime practitioner of industrial symbiosis. Whether its biosolids, reclaimed water, anaerobic digesters or waste heat, WWTPs are using this type of municipal waste for multiple benefits. Facility upgrades are an opportunity to invest in processes that achieve multiple benefits and better serve communities.

Industry highlight – Anaerobic digestion, which is the process of taking organic waste and converting it to reclaimed natural gas (RNG) and nutrients, has been in practice at Washington dairies for many years. DeRuyter and Sons Dairies (Yakima, WA) is a large example and smaller-scale digesters are operating in Whatcom County such as Edaleen and Vander Haak Farms.

The next industrial revolution.

Washington state is building a stronger circular economy – one that is sustainable, integrated, climate-friendly and profitable – by decoupling growth from the consumption of finite resources. Industrial symbiosis is one tool in a box using future forward ideas and applications, demonstrating that growth does not have to equal waste.