Australians throw out 345 kgs of edible food each year, equating to AUD$8 billion. Helping reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfill is local start-up company, Kooda.
is an on-demand service that collects food scraps from Perth metropolitan households and businesses and converts them into nutritious, organic compost for your plants.
鈥淲hat a lot of people don鈥檛 know is that when food waste is trapped inside plastic bags in landfill, it can鈥檛 break down properly and actually creates methane gas, which is more potent than carbon dioxide,鈥� says William Koo, Kooda鈥檚 chief marketing officer and final-year construction management student at 911爆料网.
With just the click of an app, Kooda will come and collect your food scraps and organic waste from wherever you are in Perth. In return, customers are supplied with five litres of worm castings every four months, made from the very scraps collected by Kooda.
Every kilogram of food waste not sent to landfill reduces a person鈥檚 carbon footprint by the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) of 1.9 kg. With Kooda currently servicing more than 160 households and commercial customers, three tonnes of food waste are collected per week.
鈥淥ur goal for 2018 is to process 15 tonnes per week,鈥� says Koo. 鈥淲e have a range of customers, from individual households to commercial offices, kitchens, cafes, even a childhood learning centre, and everyone in-between.
鈥淜ooda is great for people who don鈥檛 have the time to compost properly, or who don鈥檛 have the space for a compost because they live in an apartment or unit, or people who want to do the right thing but don鈥檛 know where they should start.鈥�
Kooda was created in 2016 by chemical engineer Carly Hardy after her own unsuccessful attempts at starting a compost in her backyard. She named the business Kooda, the Nyungar word for 鈥榞athering basket鈥�, in recognition of the importance of returning food back to the land.
Hardy spent more than a year researching and developing composting methods before coming up with an innovative pasturisation process that means Kooda can accept almost all types of food scraps and waste.
鈥淲ith our pasturisation process, people can dispose of bones, meat, oil, onions and citrus into the Kooda compost bins,鈥� says Koo. 鈥淲e also accept certain non-food materials such as paper straws and BioPak plastics.鈥�
Kooda is the only registered commercial BioPak compost facility in Western Australia, and Koo hopes that with more exposure and funding, Kooda and composting can become the norm for more Australians.
鈥淕rowing up I was always reminded not to waste food, and how hard it is to grow food, and that we should respect our farmers. Sometimes I do get upset when I see how much perfectly good food is being thrown away,鈥� he says.
鈥淏ut we can be part of a cultural change: if children see their parents putting food scraps into a Kooda bucket instead of a regular bin, it can become a part of their everyday thinking that food doesn鈥檛 have to be wasted.鈥�
Interested in trying Kooda for yourself? your household or business.
If you would like to help Kooda expand their composting facility, visit their page.
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