Carbon Harvest specializes in biochar for community benefit. We produce biochar in partnership with communities and use it as a tool for rebuilding damaged soils into healthy, productive ecosystems that capture carbon, water and nutrients. In order to accomplish this, we have two arms of the business. The first is working with municipalities to develop biochar projects designed to deliver solutions to resource management challenges. The second is developing locally adapted end markets for the biochar that is produced from those facilities. We are building a model for these projects to make them replicable and repeatable in different locations across the country. Development of this model opens a third market as we scale–selling access to the model to entrepreneurs and/or municipalities who want a turnkey system for developing a successful biochar program. We envision a digital hub to facilitate learning, collaboration and access to our suite of solutions for different aspects of biochar projects- such as facility design, equipment selection, feedstock processing, project permitting, product marketing, carbon credit management, and biochar utilization.
Core Values:
We are driven to have a positive impact on our communities.
We believe healthy soil is the foundation of healthy ecosystems, healthy people and resilient communities.
We believe it’s possible to create local solutions to climate change by focusing on healthy soils.
Sam’s Story
I have been working in social enterprises for over a decade. My first was an urban hydroponic greens business in Cincinnati. We grew microgreens for sale to restaurants and then expanded to larger format salad greens and herbs, eventually working with distributors to send our product to multiple states. We worked in the urban core and did our best to hire from the communities in which we operated. We had ambitious poverty alleviation goals, but I always knew something didn’t feel right about the business model.
It was only after I stepped away that I could acknowledge to myself what it was–the way we were growing was not sustainable. They were plants on life support. Grown in plastic growing trays on a diet of chemically derived nutrients. Energy intensive. And the system could never grow and evolve into anything more complex or elegant. At best, it hummed along in a steady state. At worst, the system was besieged by insects, disease, and mechanical failures.
This business took a toll on me and when I left, I took stock of my goals and priorities and decided that making a positive impact on climate change is the best thing I can do for my family and the planet. I refocused on my love for soil and partnering with ecosystems to accomplish multiple goals at once. The health of plants, the quality of our food, the state of the soil, the state of the climate and the health of our bodies and minds are all connected. Biochar became my way into this interconnected web. Rather than look at climate solutions from the perspective of machines that suck carbon out of the air and trap it underground, biochar offers a holistic approach to addressing climate change while accomplishing many other goals at the same time.
In love for the planet,
Sam Dunlap