It shouldn’t be too surprising that Dave Thompson, owner of Pearl Valley Eggs, employs some unconventional technologies for waste management on his Illinois farm. Thompson, a former elementary school teacher, has grown his company over the last two and a half decades to include 1.1 million hens, an egg packing facility and an organic fertilizer operation. Pearl Valley uses a reed bed biofilter to remove biosolids from the wastewater stream and convert them to plant material, and a manure composting system to convert layer waste into organic fertilizer products used coast to coast.