Clean Tech and Profitable Business Models

Over the years at 2GreenEnergy, I’m sure I’ve evaluated, at least at a cursory level, more than 500 business plans whose authors proposed concepts that would invoke some area within the realm of clean tech and create a profit stream from it.

One I’ll never forget was “Fertile Grounds,” a plan to collect used coffee grounds from the local Starbucks (et al.) coffee shops and process them into fertilizer.  While I thought the name was extremely clever, that’s where my respect for the idea ended.  I was very close to 100% confident that the cost of a driver, a car, fuel to collect the grounds, and then the energy used to dry, process, and bag the grounds, followed by sales and distribution was going to turn out to be a losing proposition.

I feel the same way about the concept expressed in the meme here.  Gathering and processing avocado pits does not seem to be a scalable way to manufacture disposable cutlery.