In the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side, a neglected dumping ground has a new look. Once the site of an agricultural machinery factory that left behind contaminated land when it closed, the site is now a 35,000-square-foot campus dedicated to environmental and economic sustainability.
At the heart of the Green Era Campus sits an anaerobic digester — an oxygen-free tank that operates similarly to a cow’s stomach, breaking down organic waste to produce compost and biogas. The biogas is then converted into renewable natural gas that powers local businesses, while the compost is used in Chicago’s urban gardens.
The campus started as a project to prevent food waste but has become a driver of community and economic development since opening in May 2025.
“The Green Era Campus was really a community-driven project,” Jason Feldman, CEO and co-founder of Green Era Campus, said. “It started with our shared interest in keeping food waste out of landfills [and to] make compost available. But anaerobic digestion is really an exciting opportunity … to make more food, more jobs [and] also to decarbonize our grid.”
The digester is the first in the United States to process packaged waste, which is critical in dense urban areas like Chicago. Items like bagged chips or crushed tomatoes in plastic containers are unpacked using mechanical processes before being broken down.
This capability allows Green Era to treat over 85,000 tons of food waste per year. While Chicago residents are encouraged to contribute, most of the waste comes from corporate donors.
“What’s really allowing us to scale up to the big volume producers,” Feldman said. “We’re talking your Walmarts, your Costcos, your grocery stores, your large hotels. The daily volume of food waste coming out of those is unbelievable.”
An estimated 30-40% of the U.S. food supply goes to waste, and landfills are the most common destination. Landfill disposal has historically been cheaper in places with abundant land, disincentivizing the development of alternative systems.
“[In] a lot of the country, particularly the Midwest … it’s cheap just to throw your waste in a big hole and throw some dirt on top of it,” Feldman said.
Anaerobic digestion, however, reframes food waste as a community resource. Green Era Campus also wants to benefit the community by prioritizing local hiring and education. Since opening, the campus has created 15 jobs, with plans to increase to 50 as they implement an education center and a greenhouse.
“We’re really about bringing economic development [and] education back,” Feldman said. “We have tons of tours, school kids coming through, learning about what we’re doing. Everybody can appreciate it, everybody can participate in it.”
Green Era’s approach reflects a growing trend in climate policy: pairing environmental goals with local economic benefits. But whether projects like this can drive broader economic transformation remains an open question.
Karthik Sastry, an environmental economics professor who studies how societies adapt to climate change through policy change and technological innovation, says the answer depends on how success is defined.
“Sometimes the effects of these kinds of initiatives aren’t that they employ 100 versus 1,000 people. It’s that they get people engaged and thinking harder about their role in the environment,” Sastry said.
This engagement, he said, begins with problems that are tangible and locally felt.
“Food waste is one of the most approachable sustainability problems because people see it in their daily lives,” Sastry said.
Projects like the campus align with principles of a circular economy: a restorative model that reduces waste by keeping materials in use through reuse and recycling. Through anaerobic digestion, food scraps become energy, compost and jobs rather than landfill waste.
Underused areas, like the brownfield site Green Era Campus was built on, offer space to test innovations like the digester. With the right messaging, projects like these can also lead to greater change.
“What matters is whether cities use these projects as opportunities for outreach and public engagement rather than expecting benefits to emerge on their own,” Sastry said.
