Could Immokalee become a center for innovative solutions to alternative energy production and creative uses of our nation's waste stream? 

A Wisconsin-based company thinks it just might. 

The Growth Design Corporation, based in Milwaukee but far-ranging in pursuits and interests, met with Immokalee's planners February 15th and suggested the community could be place where pioneering steps are taken efforts as diverse as indoor organic tomato production to the conversion of organice waster into bio-methane gas or fertilizer. 

"We have access to technology that can turn plastic (waste) into above-crude grade (oil) for less than $10 a barrel," said Growth Design's Byron Tweeten, a third-generation Iowa farmer, business man and part-time Naples resident. "It can also produce a synthetic fiber that Wal-Mart is very interested in." 

Growth Design's interest in renewable and sustainable energy resources has grown out of the creation of its Center for Environmental Stewardship, the result of its work over many years with faith-based organizations who are now coming to recongize the responsibility humankind has in caring for and sustaining the Earth's resources. 

Tweeten and his Growth Design team have been quietly meeting with a number of groups in Southwest Florida, including Collier County commissioners and senior county staff, engaging the community in the possibility of investing in a public-private partnership to build, among other installations, waste-to-energy plants. 

Locating such installations in Immokalee makes sense because of the community's relatively inexpensive land, young and energetic workforce and a wide range of economic incentives. 

The attraction of Immokalee to innovative solutions to today's major problems is just one of the many reasons why Immokalee is "Florida in the 21st Century."