Pyrocan & Recan

Every day, trucks carry a building's trash across town to sorting centers, landfills and incinerators, and the building pays for every mile. Pyrocan and Recan flip that model. They are compact waste processing plants sized for large buildings, campuses and communities, so waste is processed where it is made and its materials are put back to use on site.

The idea

Most of what we throw away isn't worthless. It is mixed, wet, or in the wrong place. City waste systems are built to move everything to a few large facilities, which means paying again and again for collection, hauling, handling and disposal. Pyrocan and Recan miniaturize that whole chain and bring it on site, turning a building's waste stream into a local resource.

Two units, one system

• Recan: recover and reuse. Recan handles the recoverable stream. It sorts and processes recyclables, and turns food scraps and other organic waste into compost or soil amendments, so materials go straight back into use around the building, from landscaping and rooftop gardens to community supply.
• Pyrocan: convert what's left. Pyrocan handles what can't be recycled. It uses pyrolysis, heating waste without oxygen so it breaks down instead of burning, to convert residual material into useful products: a fuel gas that can help power the system, and biochar, a stable carbon-rich solid used to improve soil and lock away carbon.

Together, they aim to keep as much of a building's waste as possible out of trucks and landfills, recovering value first and converting only what remains.

Why process waste locally

1. Lower long-term costs. Fewer pickups mean less spending on hauling, handling and tipping fees. Over the life of a building, those savings can pay back the cost of the equipment.
2. Materials stay useful. Compost, recovered materials, biochar and fuel gas replace resources the building would otherwise buy.
3. Less traffic and fewer emissions. Every truck that doesn't need to come means less fuel burned, less road wear and less noise.
4. Less pressure on cities. Buildings and communities take responsibility for their own waste, freeing city systems to focus on what can't be handled locally.

Who it is for

• Apartment towers and large office buildings
• University and corporate campuses, hospitals and hotels
• Planned communities, eco-villages and remote sites far from city services
• Looking further ahead, sealed habitats at sea and in space, where nothing can be thrown away and every material has to be reused

Open questions we are working on

• Clean emissions. Pyrolysis has to be run carefully, with gas cleaning and monitoring, so that converting waste doesn't create air pollution for the people living next to it.
• Safety and permits. On-site thermal processing inside or beside occupied buildings faces strict fire, building and environmental codes.
• Sorting at the source. Both units work best when residents separate waste well. Simple, foolproof sorting is as important as the machines.
• Right size and payback. Finding the building size where local processing clearly costs less than hauling.
• Odor, noise and space. Equipment has to fit into a basement, loading dock or utility yard without becoming a nuisance.

Why it matters to us

There is no "away" when we throw things away. It just becomes someone else's problem, somewhere else. Processing waste where it is made puts responsibility back where it belongs, and turns a cost into a resource. That shift from extraction and disposal to stewardship and reuse is what Soterium is about.