- Well, I think if I got
  one of these for my house,
I could cancel my
  gym membership.
So this is the
  inside of a horse?
This is not what I expected
 a horse to look like.
- Horse is actually an acronym.
- What does it stand for?
- It stands for high-solids
 organic-waste recycling
system with electrical output.
- I can see why you
  shortened it to H.O.R.S.E.
So can you tell me what
happens in this space.
- So the H.O.R.S.E.
 is this living system.
We convert food scraps
 into fertilizer and energy.
Nothing's wasted, zero waste.
- So how does it work?
- So we're gonna give
 you our tricycle.
It's a cargo tricycle.
- The future is now.
(bicycle horn beeps)
Whee.
- [Jan] We pick up food
waste at restaurants
and breweries.
We bring it back here
 to feed the machine.
You actually dump the
food waste into a chute.
- Yum, lunch.
- [Jan] And we have a large,
 it's like a meat grinder.
- You know, if this weren't
 getting turned into fuel,
I might just make myself
a salad right now.
- [Jan] It sort of
  chews things up.
- I worked out this week.
I got it.
- [Jan] We can do
  protein and fat.
- So you could do bodies.
- We could do, well we could.
- You could do bodies,
 maybe next year.
- Yeah, maybe next year.
And then, right below
 us is a mixing pump.
- Really brings me back
to my days on the farm.
Farmville is what
  I'm talking about.
- And that pumps and
 circulates the food
and the microbes together.
It's 30 days in here.
- It's a very slow
  digestive system.
- It is, the microbes
 just naturally make
renewable natural gas.
We make electricity
 out of the gas.
You can plug your Nissan Leaf
 into it, your electric bike,
or we could power food
 trucks even with this.
And then the tank behind me
 is the liquid fertilizer.
So everything is
inside this box.
We've really worked
 hard to make it
compatible with urban settings.
- Yeah, it looks
  like a tiny home,
but covered in space blankets.
- Yeah.
- And with weirder furniture.
- Yeah, that's what
 we were trying to do
is miniaturize something
that has always been big
and now it's miniature.
There are lots of big digesters,
but you have to $5 million
dollars or $50 million dollars.
- If I wanted to
  get one of these,
how much would it set me back?
- It's about the
cost of a Tesla.
- Alright, well I could just
 park it next to my Tesla.
- Yeah, that's right, yep.
Pretty good burgers.
- What do we do with
 our organic waste now.
If your organic waste
 doesn't go to the H.O.R.S.E,
where does it go?
- Well, on a national basis,
it's landfilling
or incineration.
A lot of the West Coast
 cities and Northeast cities,
there's composting,
but that generally involves
 a dumpster, a truck,
hauling it to somebody
 else's community.
In this case, we're
 trying to minimize
or eliminate trucks,
be zero waste and generate
 valuable commodities within
a one or two-mile radius.
We're at a brewery here today.
- So what I always say
  is there is no such thing
as garbage, just
resources out of place.
And we produce a
lot of resources
left over from the
  brewing process.
- (coughs)
- Yeah a little dusty.
- The spent yeast out
 of the brewery is.
It's amazing.
It's got a lot of gas potential.
We feed the H.O.R.S.E.
 twice a week
and then the
 machine runs itself.
When you look at
who's inquiring,
it tends to be
 islands and campuses
whether they're
 corporate, government,
college campuses.
We've exported a couple
kits to Sri Lanka
and the Philippines.
- What's your grand
 vision to this?
How is this gonna
  save the world?
- You've got wind and solar,
you've got some
 tidal stuff going on.
This is a whole new category
that is starting
 to be talked about,
this bio-energy space.
We're trying to
  democratize this,
make it affordable, simple,
and it lets people
 be more self-reliant
or more energy-independent.
- Nothing like an e-bike
ride in the morning.
- [Jan] It's a bit of a miracle
that you can take something
that's really ugly
 and smelly and problem
and you can convert it into
something commercially valuable.
- It looks like mud but
the smell is actually
sorta pleasant.
It smells like Thanksgiving.
It's actually pretty,
 I would eat this.
