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Growing up, Dane Christianson (ME ’15) discovered a pair of passions—inventing and environmentalism—that put him on the path to entrepreneurship.     

“I always wanted to be an inventor,” he says. He showed his prowess in that arena by coming up with the idea for the X-Cube, an expanded and more challenging version of the Rubik’s Cube. As an engineering student at 91����, he perfected the toy’s design and took it to market, selling thousands of them to puzzle fans and appearing, X-Cube in hand, on the nationally televised Steve Harvey Show.

Meanwhile, Christianson’s deep interest in the environment motivated him to begin recycling his food scraps. “I’d bring it over to Illinois Tech brand-new urban farm and dump it in the compost bins,” he says. “I thought, if I’m willing to take my food scrap to compost it, maybe other people will do the same if we have drop-off spots. That was the seed of the idea for where I am now with Block Bins.”  

After graduating, Christianson continued his X-Cube business for a time before turning his attention to developing his idea for a compost recycling service. In 2018 he founded in Chicago and launched the service the following year. Residents and businesses buy subscriptions, which provide access to locked compost drop-off bins scattered across the city. Block Bins staff regularly pick up the compost and clean the bins multiple times per month. From a modest beginning serving 100 drop-off points on a shoestring budget, with a subcontractor doing all the pickups, the company served 1,000 drop-off points last year, with the pickups done in-house. In 2024 the company was selected as a finalist for the .  

There’s a demand for composting from people who want to reduce their carbon footprint and simply can’t stand to see their food scraps go to waste, Christianson says. “We’re also seeing a trend of more commercial clients such as grocery stores and restaurants, which can generate literally tons of food. They want to be able to quantify the amount of waste that their company is diverting from landfills,” he says.  

Block Bins partners with a company that uses an anaerobic digester to turn food scraps into soil amendments and methane that will be captured and pumped into the natural gas grid, Christianson notes.  

Still, it can be hard to get people to pay for composting when they can throw food scraps into the garbage instead. Christianson points out that the Block Bins model, with its dedicated stream system to handle just one type of recyclable, increases efficiency and lowers costs by eliminating the need for sorting and minimizing contamination of recyclables, compared to the comingled model commonly used by recyclers.  

“It’s a simple idea,” he says, “but a new way to think about how we can collect recycling in an urban environment.” —Scott Lewis