Everybody hates plastic bottles: time to do something about it. Our proprietary technology, with provisional patents filed, uses industrial hemp to create certifiably compostable beverage containers, using new green chemistry techniques – and giving local family farms a new revenue crop.
Elysian Holdings is leveraging the growing national and global support for industrial hemp cultivation as a sustainable and profitable 3-product — seed, oil, and hemp fiber — successor to more-depleting tobacco, corn, cotton, soybean farming. There are outstanding potential efficiencies and sustainability from local-sourcing container hemp feedstock from West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland farms, combined with bottling of local water and other local products. They have initiated exciting partnerships with West Virginia’s ChemCeption chemistry incubator, Marshall University’s Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Manufacturing, and with leading sustainable materials research groups in New York and Colorado, using breakthrough technologies and working also with local development authorities.
TEAM BIOS:
Carey Thompson, Co-Founder and President. A Washington native, Carey is passionate about the environment and sustainability. She has been in the beauty industry for over 16 years, training at Aveda, Aveda London, and Vidal Sassoon, and has worked at Aveda and Erwin Gomez Salon, acclaimed as some of the most prestigious salons in the National Capital Region. Caring about the life and health of her clients made her become the only artist to offer organic hair color systems in DC area, starting in 2012. Tired of the waste created by single-use bottles within the beauty industry, Carey used her deep knowledge of plant chemistry and nutrition, and her marketing background from her studies at Montgomery College, to found Elysian Holdings in January 2018 to address the global pandemic of plastic pollution, affecting our oceans, our groundwater, and even our food supply. With family farm property in West Virginia, Carey is building with Elysian Holdings a way for family farms to embrace the cultivation of newly legalized industrial hemp – a historically important American resource that offers multiple, profitable product streams, as well as a sustainable, widely sowable, and low-depletion new cash crop. (
LinkedIn)
Tom Mills, Co-Founder. Tom has an extensive background in sustainable technology development and licensing, and has significant small-company, corporate financing, and strategic partnering experience. He is a seasoned entrepreneur and is the co-founder of PaceControls, a DOE-funded smart grid company based at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, as well as Elysian Holdings. PaceControls’ award-winning Android IoT product suite is used by global property managers like CBRE, by Fortune 500 companies, and by large electric and gas utilities, to connect, control and optimize the operation of the millions of cooling and heating units that otherwise would be unconnected — improving electric grid operations, reducing carbon impact 20%+, and saving customers money. Typical PACE+PACE Cloud project paybacks are in the 1-3 year range on a national basis, even before utility incentives. In 2010, Tom was selected as a Fellow under a program for cleantech CEOs, funded by the Citi Foundation and the SJF Institute. He was selected by the Hitachi Foundation in 2011 and 2012 as an entrepreneur mentor to growing companies, and has served as a member and investment reviewer with Investors Circle-Social Venture Network, a national network of investors focused on growing sustainable businesses. Tom holds a BSE in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has four years of power operating experience as a U.S. Navy submarine nuclear propulsion officer prior to business school, and has done doctoral program coursework in Finance and in Logistics, Technology & Project Management at George Washington University in Washington, DC. (
LinkedIn)
