Industrial Evolution. Lyle Estill

astonished to see that our biodiesel production had hit an all time low — about 2700 gallons in a month, from an asset capable of making 4000 gallons in a day. We were down more than 90% from the same period a year earlier.

      Yet our campus was expanding. Dan was leading volunteers in the construction of a new pole barn for Piedmont Biofarm, which was profitable on its own head of steam, and building a new greenhouse. Screech was undertaking a bold expansion, moving his operation from a lone greenhouse inside the fence to five more up on the hill.

      I was building a seed crushing facility in the hallway of Building 3, to ready us for both a workshop, and a load of sunflower seeds that had been grown in wastewater by the City of Raleigh.

      A new era of education and outreach had begun. Used cooking oil collection was in full swing, and Rachel tasked her sister Andrea with the creation of a new tradeshow booth.

      One of the panels on the new booth was to be “Products from the Plant,” and Rachel and I went to work assembling photographs and verbiage.

      Starting at the same gate I once shoved open as I walked into an abandoned industrial compound 4 years earlier, the list went something like this: Honey from Rick and his bees, organic produce from Eastern Carolina Organics, bookkeeping services from Tracy at Green Bean, festivals and events from the Abundance Foundation, biodiesel, rainwater delivery systems, vermiculture bins, boiler fuel, glycerin, design-build services and research from Piedmont Biofuels, produce and worm castings from Piedmont Biofarm, bio-herbicides and bio-pesticides from Eco-Blend, soaps from Deniece, and hydroponics lettuce from Screech.

      Were we only making biodiesel, we would be bankrupt, like so many others. Instead we had accidentally diversified to the point of survival.

      At the time I wrote about it in a column for the Chapel Hill News — which they titled “How Industry Evolves”:

      In North Carolina, we tend to put our industrial sites in the southeast corner of every county. That’s largely so that when our industries dump their pollution in our rivers, it becomes the problem of the county next door.

      That way Alamance can have the effluent of its dye houses flow immediately into Chatham County, and Chatham County can have the effluent of its resin makers, and the heat from the Cape Fear coal fired power facility, flow readily into Harnett County, which put its denim plants in the southeast corner, and so on to the sea.

      Historically “county government” has been much more powerful in the south than in other parts of the world. We are accustomed to our county sheriffs, and attorneys, and county managers wielding serious power.

      I am presently immersed in the writing of my next book, tentatively entitled “Industrial Evolution.” The other day over lunch Rachel and I were marveling over Piedmont Biofuels, accidental creation of a fullscale eco-industrial park in Pittsboro.

      “It probably should have been in Moncure,” she said.

      That’s where we both live. It’s the southeast corner of Chatham County — where all the industry is.

      Moncure is where we have rail access. That’s a treasure for our economic development folks, since not every county has it. And Moncure is where we have cooling towers. And smokestacks. A few years ago Moncure was home to the highest emitter of formaldehyde in the land.

      Our project is “in town.” And I suppose the reason we are in town is because we started with an abandoned industrial park. We were so focused on limiting the embodied energy of our project, that we couldn’t see the point in breaking ground on a green field. Our job is to help escort North Carolina into a low carbon future, which is why we snagged a campus of abandoned buildings, rather than breaking ground on the rail spur.

      Rail is about being “big.” We want to make a go of it staying “small.”

      Today 75% of the biodiesel industry in America is boarded up. We still haven’t figured out how to turn $3.00 oil into a $2.00 fuel. Piedmont is still chugging away.

      For the past five years Rachel and I have driven past “For Rent” signs on our way to work. When the “Great Recession” hit we noticed an increase in abandoned buildings with signs in the yard. And yet there is a backlog of people who are trying to get space inside our fence.

      Where we work, the co-products of one business are the feedstock of another, and the waste of one business becomes the heat source for the greenhouse on the hill.

      In an economy that has allegedly ground to a halt, we are pulling building permits, and hiring builders. It appears the Abundance Foundation is about to move into the first “actually green” office building in Chatham County. And it’s tucked into the back yard of a chemical plant — nestled up against the sustainable farm that surrounds us.

      We offer free tours of the plant every Sunday afternoon at 1:00 —as we have always done — and we have noticed a newfound interest in sustainability. What was once “all biodiesel all the time” has shifted ever so slightly into an interest in our rainwater delivery systems, and our worm castings, and our vermiculture digesters, and the banana trees that grace our campus.

      This year we are not going to have to argue about climate change. We will simply show our guests a locally grown banana. At long last our banana trees in the yard are bearing edible fruit.

      When you go down to the industrial plants in Moncure, you tend to be stopped by a security guard. Free tours are hard to come by.

      And while both Rachel and I live down that way, I think we are glad to go to work in town…

      In the early eighties I was fortunate enough to hire on to my brother Jim’s computer distribution business. I started out hanging drywall in his office, became a technical writer for his fledgling custom engineering group, moved into order processing when the administrative anchor of the business, Suzanne, quit. From there I launched a career in sales. We were lucky. Jim started selling computers out of the trunk of his car before Microsoft was invented. When IBM entered the industry we successfully retooled our business and our business exploded like the industry itself.

      Lyle was delighted with his first edible banana harvest.

      Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates went on to become the wealthiest man on earth and a popular computer evangelist. I met him once, on the show floor of the first ever “Windows World” in Atlanta where he rode the escalator like all the rest of us. And he was gracious, thanking people for coming to his show.

      But I always thought Bill Gates was confused. He was always preaching “convergence” in which all of our technologies would arrive at the same point, and do everything for us. That struck me as being the opposite of how things happen in nature. In nature, species divide, they don’t converge. I believe the same logic holds true for business. Businesses naturally diverge.

      The world that Bill Gates described had us balancing our checkbooks, and getting our entertainment, and reading our books on one splendid device that would allow all of our needs to “converge.” Yet it seems to me I have multiple devices piling up. My boys have a Wii console for playing one type of computer game and are saving up for an Xbox to allow them a wider range of game choices. I have a notebook computer where I tend to do different work than I do with our desktop model, and apparently I am in need of a separate electronic device with which I can download the books I want to read. While it is true that my cell phone has way more computing firepower than I can possibly understand, it’s not where I play games or do my banking.

      I think “divergence” is what business does. When my brother Jim’s