SOUTH AFRICA – South African coffeehouse Bootlegger Coffee has partnered with food waste management specialist company Ywaste to turn its waste into compost, leveraging on an eco-friendly method which entails off-site composting.
To this, the coffeehouse’s customers can now purchase gardening essentials along with their cappuccino.
The course is for the greater good as for every ten bags of compost bought, Bootlegger will donate one bag of compost to a community food garden, reports EngineeringNews.
The company’s co-founder and director Pieter Bloem says, “Now our customers can up their eco-friendly street credibility by buying bags of Bootlegger top soil, potting soil and compost made with their used coffee grounds and organic food waste for just R40 for a bag.
“Healthy soils are fundamental to survival, as they are essential for healthy plant growth, nutrition and water filtration, and also help to regulate the climate and store carbon.
“At the same time that we are focused on improving soil quality, we are helping government with its zero waste to landfill goals.”
The benefit of using coffee grounds as a fertiliser is that it adds organic material to the soil, which improves drainage, water retention and aeration in the soil.
Bootlegger uses beans that are 100% sustainably sourced and roasted at its micro-roastery in Woodstock, in Cape Town, and the company is proudly 100% Rainforest Alliance Certified, meaning all products and ingredients have been produced using methods that support the three pillars of sustainability, namely social, economic and environmental.
“We would like to encourage other restaurants to avoid landfill, make the switch and make a difference in their communities with similar sustainable and eco-friendly approaches,” Bloem says.
South Africans generate roughly 54.2 million tons of general (municipal, commercial, and industrial) waste per year.
Of this, a maximum of only 10% is recycled or recovered for other uses, whilst at least 90% is landfilled or dumped.
In pursuit to offer waste-generating organizations a sustainable way to manage their organic by-products, South African based company Inseco, partners with various organizations to deploy its technology.
Inseco, an insect protein producer, undertakes breeding of the insects utilized in production of meal and oil, in piles of organic waste. Through this process, the waste is decomposed thus preventing dumping.
Inseco recently raised US$5.3m in what is termed as the country’s largest ever startup seed funding round, to boost its production capacity.
Currently it produces more than 100 metric tons of defatted insect meal and oil per month from larvae of the black soldier fly, branded as EntoMeal and EntoOil, at its state-of-the-art 10,000m² production facility in Cape Town, which it took over from AgriProtein.
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