Photos by Katharine Kimball

“We want to put the technology where the waste is, rather than moving the waste to the technology,” says Ulum. “It doesn’t make sense to unnecessarily transport garbage. It doesn’t add value. It just adds cost and carbon emissions.”

Ulum says the systems can be scaled to fit the partner’s needs and will generally sell for between $4 million and $6 million, enabling waste handlers to boost profits and create jobs by producing and selling oil. Oil produced at these facilities will be pre-sold to refineries under contract with Agilyx and distributed through existing pipeline infrastructure. “We just take care of the systems,” says Ulum. “We take advantage of the refining infrastructure and the billions of dollars that have been invested there, and we sell our oil through those existing channels.”

The company has closed a deal on its first factory in the southeastern U.S. with an unnamed partner and is nearing a second deal in the Pacific Northwest.

Following this model, Ulum says Agilyx will ultimately create more jobs indirectly than it will directly. “We have the potential to become very big,” he says. “But we will create more jobs in towns like Spokane and Medford than we will here… These operations tend to be in economically distressed regions. This is precisely where we need good, living-wage jobs. Our system runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It can   be a job engine that just keeps chugging along year after year, and growing.”