ENES

A waste transport barge moves material through a European river corridor, representing the distance and coordination required for centralized recovery.

INFRASTRUCTURE OPTIONS

The problem is not isolated. It is infrastructural.

Infrastructure problems rarely exist in isolation. Resources move. Costs accumulate. Every additional step increases complexity before recovery can begin. The best systems reduce unnecessary movement and act while solutions remain manageable.

SYSTEMS GREENCYCLING

Flow becomes infrastructural when useful streams must move before they can be treated or returned. In rural locations, distance and landscape often become obstacles to efficient energy systems. A rural electric installation connects a farm to the main grid.

01 / FLOW LOGIC

Every movement in a system has a cost.

Moving resources through a system is rarely free. Transportation requires infrastructure. Handling requires labor. Storage requires space. Every additional step consumes time, money, and effort before a useful outcome can be produced.

Time influences outcomes as well. Materials change. Conditions change. Priorities change. Systems continue operating whether action is taken or not. What can be solved today may become more complicated tomorrow.

The most effective systems reduce unnecessary movement, respond when action is possible, and solve problems before they grow larger than they need to be. Efficiency is immediate.

A rural electric installation connects a farm to the main grid — energy infrastructure bridging distance and landscape.

02 / CENTRALIZED HANDLING

Unnecessary movement is costly. Moving material is not a treatment strategy.

Many recovery systems depend on collecting materials from multiple locations before treatment can begin. This often requires significant infrastructure, time, coordination, labor, permits, fuel, and capital expenditures.

Movement and recovery are often necessary. But they are not the same thing. A resource does not become more useful because it traveled farther. A problem does not become smaller because it was moved somewhere else. Successful systems reduce costs, reduce obligations, and improve outcomes.

A large centralized treatment or recovery facility photographed from above, illustrating the scale of concentrated infrastructure.

Centralized recovery concentrates infrastructure, transport, land, and operational burden in one large site. The image shows a large treatment or recovery facility photographed from above; source metadata does not confirm the facility name or location.

03 / DISTRIBUTED CONTROL

Local systems work better.

Distance creates overhead. The farther a resource travels before treatment begins, the more infrastructure, labor, and maintenance costs accumulate. Moving things is expensive.

When recovery happens directly at the source, transportation drops and delays vanish. Costs stop compounding immediately, maximizing value.

Field workers maintain electrical infrastructure — distributed energy systems require proximity to the operating condition.

Distance has material consequences: systems require corridors, labor, equipment, and maintenance before useful energy reaches use. Field workers maintain electrical lines from elevated service buckets.

04 / PLACEMENT

Placement changes outcomes.

Time and distance matter in the real world — and so does placement. Systems perform differently depending on where they are located, how quickly they can respond, and how closely they are connected to the resources they serve. That is why the EcoTower is modular and transportable. It is designed to be deployed where the need exists rather than requiring resources to travel elsewhere before action can begin. When recovery happens close to the source, response improves, unnecessary movement declines, and value remains connected to use.

PROXIMITY

Recovery begins where resources are produced.

TIMING

Recovery begins immediately.

CONTROL

Decisions remain closer to the operating environment.

CONTINUITY

Recovery becomes part of normal operations.

USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier — representing the history of systems designed to process material streams at scale.

Scale has always been an infrastructure decision. The USS Gerald Ford represents the engineering commitment required when systems are designed to operate continuously, far from fixed support.

05 / BEHAVIOR

The proof of infrastructure is behavior.

Two systems. The same resource stream. One moves material elsewhere before action begins. The other acts where the resource already exists. The first spends time, coordination, and money before recovery begins. The second begins immediately.

The difference is not theoretical. It becomes visible in operating costs, response times, resource utilization, and long-term performance. Infrastructure is ultimately judged by behavior. The systems that perform best are the systems that solve problems sooner, reduce unnecessary costs, and continue working long after the initial decision has been made.

Centralized

Value moves away first

Material moves elsewhere before action begins.
Time, coordination, and cost are spent before recovery begins.

Local

Value stays close enough to use

Action happens where the resource already exists.
Recovery begins immediately.

Behavior comparison: distance changes timing, economics, and control. The diagram compares centralized delay with local immediacy.

06 / OUTCOME

Once value remains in use, it no longer needs to be recovered later.

This is the logic behind Greencycling. Not rescue after the fact. Not recovery as a separate activity. An operating model where recovery, use, and return remain connected from the beginning. The most effective systems reduce unnecessary movement, reduce unnecessary delay, and keep resources working longer inside the environments that produce them. Efficiency is immediate.

Go to Greencycling

07 / THE SYSTEM

The process, made concrete.

ZERE's model is operator-led: the company deploys and operates the infrastructure rather than simply selling equipment.

Every EcoTower module runs the same core process: organic feedstock — agricultural, industrial, or municipal waste — is broken down through a thermochemical process at approximately 800°C in a low-oxygen environment, rather than left to decompose in a lagoon or move through a landfill. What comes out the other side is not a waste stream. It is electricity, recovered water, and stable material outputs, produced at the site where the waste originated.

Dioxins and bioactive pathogens — bacteria, viruses, prions — are destroyed completely by the 800°C process, not reduced: independently tested at non-detect levels. Other outputs are reduced significantly — many to full compliance — depending on the composition of the material being processed.

This describes what the EcoTower process is engineered and independently tested to achieve. It is a description of process design and component-level testing — not a claim that a fully commissioned, integrated EcoTower unit has already completed continuous 24/7 field operation.

EcoTower process equipment operating at Proytec's Huehuetoca facility

Proytec's Huehuetoca testing and demonstration facility — where the core EcoTower process is engineered and tested.

08 / OUTPUTS

What comes out of an EcoTower — and what it takes to go further.

EcoTower outputs fall into three tiers: direct outputs available from every deployment, process streams generated as part of normal operation, and downstream potential, chemically dependent on feedstock, unlocked with additional processing equipment.

Treatment and recovery equipment at Proytec's Huehuetoca facility — the same class of hardware that produces these output tiers.

Base Outputs

Produced directly by every EcoTower deployment:

Clean electricity
Recovered water
Biochar-track material
Ammonium sulfate

Process Streams

Generated as part of the core process, available for use or further recovery depending on configuration:

Syngas
Hydrogen (H₂)
Carbon monoxide (CO)
Heat
Steam
Recovered CO₂ / sulfur

Advanced Downstream Potential

Not outputs of a standard EcoTower deployment. What's chemically possible depends on feedstock composition — additional processing equipment makes an already-possible product accessible, not a new one:

Ammonia
Urea
Methanol
Ethanol
Synthetic fuels

Value / Revenue Verticals

The EcoTower is designed so that value does not come from a single output. Resource recovery creates multiple economic pathways through water, energy, recovered products, and verified environmental credits.

Clean water
Energy
Recovered products
Verified environmental credits

09 / ENGINEERING

The engineering lineage behind EcoTower.

Gasification and waste-to-energy systems have more than a century of industrial engineering precedent — EcoTower is not based on newly discovered chemistry. In 2005, research by Koger, Bull, Burnette & Gnosa at North Carolina State University demonstrated the relevant thermochemical principle in an agricultural-waste context — independent engineering precedent for the process principle, not independent validation of the current EcoTower system.

EcoTower advances that precedent — engineered for continuous 24/7 operation, building on decades of subsequent process refinement across feed cycle, wastewater handling, thermal supply, and cooling. That integrated, continuous mode has not yet been commissioned in the field.

FEED CYCLE

2005: batch-only processing. EcoTower: engineered for continuous feed.

WASTEWATER

2005: no integrated wastewater treatment. EcoTower: integrated wastewater treatment.

THERMAL SUPPLY

2005: propane-dependent. EcoTower: self-sustaining thermal-loop design.

COOLING

2005: manual cooling. EcoTower: automated rapid quench.

Industrial lineage

EcoTower's engineering is led by Proytec founders Gustavo Bonilla Pérez and Sergio Félix Cruz Carranza, whose careers span major Mexican energy and process infrastructure including Tula, Salamanca, Cadereyta, Salina Cruz, and La Cangrejera / Morelos.

Ownership & operating model

Proytec engineers EcoTower. Zere builds the business around it. As Proytec's exclusive global commercial partner and a minority shareholder in the company, Zere manages every EcoTower deployment from first site assessment to commissioning — and captures the environmental value each system generates in the field, including its water, power, and credit output. Proytec owns the technology. Zere owns the deployment. ZERE operates what it deploys. EcoTower is infrastructure, not equipment sold and left behind.

Meet the engineering team → Deeper technical evidence publishes on the Journal

10 / CAPACITY & ECONOMICS

Material reflects cost.

Module cost varies by installation — typically $1.5M to $4M+ per module — driven by three factors: turbine sizing, the monitoring and measurement equipment that tracks material in and out, and the feed system required to prepare and mix the feedstock, which varies by material — municipal waste, for instance, requires sorting and pulverizing before it can be processed.

Feedstock also determines output. Energy potential rises with material density and dryness: poultry waste yields the least, swine and dairy/cattle manure more, slaughterhouse byproducts substantially more, and forestry residue — material cleared to reduce wildfire risk — the most of any feedstock EcoTower processes.

A growing number of jurisdictions — including California, through emerging biomass-removal policy and funding initiatives, and pending federal measures — are funding the removal of forest biomass to reduce wildfire risk. That material is also among the highest-yield feedstocks EcoTower processes, making forestry residue a third market alongside agricultural and municipal waste.

Distributed infrastructure operating close to demand, without long-distance transmission

Distributed infrastructure is designed to operate close to demand — without dependence on new transmission infrastructure.

TURBINE

Sized to match output requirements.

MONITORING

Equipment tracks material in and out.

FEED SYSTEM

Prepares and mixes feedstock before processing.

FEEDSTOCK

Density and dryness determine energy yield.

EcoTower generates revenue across multiple independent streams — clean electricity, recovered water, biochar-track material, and additional byproducts — rather than a single revenue source. Multiple independent value/revenue streams plus applicable incentive programs can materially affect project economics. For detailed financial modeling, contact us directly.

The best systems are invisible.