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While doing research at Rutgers University, his team developed a technology to accelerate the composting cycle of organic waste in an odorless manner to produce high grade fertilizer.
Ziad is a multi-disciplinary engineer who specializes in building communal level Municipal Recycling Facilities that go against the trend of central mega recycling plants. While doing research at Rutgers University, his team developed a technology to accelerate the composting cycle of organic waste in an odorless manner to produce high grade fertilizer.
After returning to Lebanon in 1996, Ziad started Cedar Environmental, an environmental and industrial engineering organization that aims to build recycling plants to produce organically-certified fertilizers and leave no waste material to be disposed of, but instead recycled into a new form of product to be used again and again.
Most municipalities in Lebanon and the Middle East cannot afford to buy recycling plants, so Ziad worked out a three-way contract where local banks give his company soft loans to build the recycling facilities and municipalities pay only for the service of recycling/composting in comfortable monthly installments not exceeding US $5 per household per month. Recently, Ziad and his engineering team, after four years of research, developed a new technology which transforms plastic bags into solid plastic panels, dubbed ECOBOARD, used in the outdoors to replace wooden and steel panels. They have won the 2013 International Energy Globe Award for this revolutionary process. Currently, they are transforming that technology from using fossil fuels to generate the required energy to biomass a renewable energy source.
He is the recipient of an American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE) design award in 1993 for his design linking municipal waste management to agriculture. In 2001, he received the Ford Motor Company Environmental & Conservation award for the Middle East. In 2011, he was named Arab World Social Innovator by Synergos Institute in New York, USA.
In February 2014, he was awarded by the World CSR Congress the Green Future Leadership Award and later that year named to the fourth annual GOOD 100 list of global citizens and creative change-makers by GOOD magazine, a US-based publication.
In June 2003, he was awarded the certificate of appreciation and recognition by the Syrian Government for his overall plan to make Syrian Food industries compliant with Clean Production Protocols. He expanded his study to be implemented all over the Middle East and North Africa region and received the certificate of recognition of the Arab League in April 2006. His work in the advancement of the Zero Waste Societies earned him a speaking slot at the TEDxBeirut conference in September 2011. He has made numerous television appearances.
