A few months ago I went to a talk with some representatives of the council in Feilding about composting. Their biggest problem they had was with what they called “biomass” – surplus run-off nutrients from farm waste disposal that they simply couldn’t compost, because they had insufficient compostable material to compost with it. I didn’t connect the dots at the time, but what they were referring to was nothing other than the sorts of run-off nutrients that are currently flooding New Zealand rivers, and which have become very topical in the lead-up to the election.
The Feilding Proposal
The Feilding Council members were deeply cognisant of these problems. They understood their obligations under the Waste Minimisation Act 2008. In fact, they had recently put a proposal to the people of Feilding that they provide each household with a ‘kitchen caddy’ that would allow for easy collection of household waste, and would arrange a pickup day for household waste. The cost of these services would be passed on to rates payers at a cost of approximately 67c per week per household.
The problem was, they couldn’t sell it. In a region with senior citizens, ratepaying voters were opposed to any perceived increase in their rates. While some voters approved of the proposal, most voters blocked it. The Feilding Council has since gone back to the drawing board on the solution that they proposed, in the hopes that in a few years, the mood of ratepayers will shift.
“If we can put this proposal back in front of the community as part of a long term plan, couched in the right way, we can do a round cost, look at making it cost neutral, that sort of thing.”
The meeting with the Feilding Council produced two key insights:
1) One of the Feilding representatives who had a lot of experience with home composting and office place composting remarked: “The biggest problem with vermicomposting is that it produces very little compost! You sift through several months of the stuff and only have a little bit left over!”
I pointed out that this was not the worst problem to be having. In fact, from a household collection standpoint, it was an absolute godsend. If households were turning large amounts of waste into little amounts of compost, it would be far easier to collect and transfer to a central facility.
2) The next insight was that in actual fact, household kitchen waste is an asset. The way it’s currently dealt with is a cost centre. At the moment, it is shoved in a garbage bag and sent to landfill, adding to the costs of packaging, transport, and storage, which are household costs as well as council costs, and which are reflected in your rates. Every few years you need to find a new landfill to dump your stuff in, and this is often money paid to international companies.
This left me with the question: How could a revised solution be proposed that would be self-funding as well as sustainable? How could this option be promoted to voters on an ‘opt-in’ basis that many voters would actually take up the offer?
The Four Step Solution
1) Each “Opting In” Household Gets a Vermicomposting System
Vermicomposting systems are actually very cheap to manufacture and put together. Essentially, you drill holes in some stackable lidded boxes, provide some torn up old newspaper bedding, provide some worms, and cover them over with a used coffee sack/worm blanket, then watch the worms grow.
In addition to the box, you provide a brief 15 minute training session per household. If there are any problems with the bin, you talk them through the problems on the phone, or else go out to see them and help find a solution.
My estimates on a cost per unit would be between $30 and $50, depending on whether you grow your worms yourself, or buy them in from elsewhere. Many of the manufacturing inputs could simply be recycled.
The cost of troubleshooting and support is more difficult to estimate. As one of my little side businesses, I manufacture worm farms and sell them locally here in Otaki. My pitch is that I offer the troubleshooting support, even being willing to come out on site to troubleshoot the problems, all as part of the package cost. But having sold dozens of these boxes, and even with a 3 month money back guarantee, I have never had a single complaint on any of them since selling them – not a single phone call nor a request to come out on site.
To make it more cost neutral for the council and for households, you could ask that “opting in” households pay a sum for the service, say $99 + GST, but this cost could be spread out over several years and simply tacked on to their next rates bills. In the first year alone, a properly implemented vermicomposting system could return over $32 in reduced costs per household in reduced rubbish bag costs alone, so the system could easily be self-funding over time on a household as well as a council basis.
2) The Council Buys Back Pre-Composted Kitchen Waste
Each “Opting In” household would then have the option to sell back their kitchen waste to the council.
From a marketing standpoint, there’s nothing more sexy than the pure schadenfreude associated with forcing the council to buy back your rubbish. Which is why I think a website with a dedicated tagline reading “Sell Your Kitchen Waste Back to the Council” could be very influential at getting people to “opt in” to the programme.
Although the council would be buying the rubbish back per household, the amount could be very nominal indeed. The Council might offer to buy back composted kitchen waste for as little as 10c per kg. And keep in mind that as we described above, vermicomposting is actually very efficient at reducing the volume of compost that needs to be collected, while simultaneously improving its quality and purity. This in turn would reduce the frequency with which you would operate a collection run – another cost saving for the council.
All you would need to do this would be to put a set of scales on a truck. You would weigh the incoming compost, attach it to the household collection point, and then credit the value to the household owners next rates bill. It would be fairly easy to create an app that could manage that business process.
For quality problems, you could work on a “Yellow Card” system. During the collection, the truck driver would “flip the lid” on the kitchen caddy and check if there are any impurities. People who try to get away with sending you uncomposted garbage could be given a “Yellow Card” or a “Red Card” and suspended from the programme. But in general, vermicomposting is incredibly efficient. A lot more can be composted through vermicomposting than most people generally realise.
3) The Council Adds the Nutrient Run-Off to the Compost at a Commercial Facility
Having collected the pre-composted contents, the council then deposits the compost at a commercial facility and adds the biomass run-off from local farms for further composting. Rather than worsen the quality of the compost, these nutrients would likely increase the richness and nutrient variety of the already high quality vermicompost, and each tonne of biomass that gets disposed of in this way is a tonne that does not go into local rivers.
So, over time, this process could minimise the environmental impact on rivers and “help keep NZ rivers swimmable” as all the political parties are so currently promising.
4) Nutrient Rich Compost Packaged and Sold for $20 Per 20kg Bag
The final stage is pure genius. The council simply packages 20kg bags of the high quality vermicompost in some attractive, cleanly branded packaging which tells the story of the whole process, and then offers it for sale. As well as the tagline of high quality locally made vermicompost, you could sell it on any of the following points – helping keep NZ rivers swimmable, helping reduce the impact on landfill, helping keep profits in the community. And all of these points would be true. All of the money would return to the council and so be kept in the community, possibly funding subsequent environmental initiatives or even being returned to ratespayers in the form of rates cuts.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the business model here. The cost that the council pays per kg for the compost would be 10c. The cost that the council sells the final packaged compost for would be $20 per 20kg. Yes, some additional content would be lost in the second stage composting process. Yes, there would be some extra costs associated with collection and composting. But all in all it reads to me like a highly profitable business model.
Not only that, but it answers a fundamental problem of household waste collection – how do we incentivise people to compost household waste who don’t actually operate a garden? This solution would put additional money in the pocket of elderly ratespayers who otherwise might stand in the way of a costly ‘green’ proposal from council.
Addressing Problems With the Model
There are some problems with the model. It seems to me unlikely that compost manufactured in such a way could ever attain “Organic Certification” standards, regardless of how “green” it is or how nutrient dense it is. The irony is here that the compost would likely be of the highest quality, but would be unsuitable for farms that require organically certified inputs.
There would be an upfront capital requirement – but this could be easily sorted given the fairly large number of organisations that will fund grants for waste minimisation initiatives.
There would be no problem in growing your own worms. As per this article, worms reproduce in such enormous quantities that it would take approximately 3 months for 100 worms to turn into 3,000 under reasonably ideal growing circumstances. Some planning would be involved to supply an entire section of the community, but I estimate you could supply the whole of Wellington with household worm farms in between 12 to 18 months.
So – now comes my sales pitch.
Dob In Your Council!
All we need to get this up and running is one successful instance of a council actually implementing the idea and selling the compost successfully. After we have one success story, we already have a proven and scalable business model that could be implemented all across the country and even internationally.
All councils are legislatively obliged to consider new and inventive schemes to minimise waste under the Waste Minimisation Act 2008, so don’t be afraid to remind them of their legal obligations if they seem a bit reticent to talk to you.
I’d love to do the talking for you. If you need my help simply leave me a message on Facebook or else on my blog.
I’m not going to get involved at the business partner level because my other commitments currently mean I am 100% committed elsewhere. But happy to function in an advisory capacity for any council who sees an opportunity in this or any individual who wants to put forward the case along these lines.
In essence, I’m “open sourcing” this business model because my current business commitments leave me 100% committed to other projects. But keen to see it made into a success with the right people driving it.
