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Enrich360: Food waste to fertiliser and back to food
enrich360
After witnessing devastating soil degradation, Yarra Valley Farms founder Bill Kollatos, started enrich360 to create compost and fertiliser from restaurants and catering food waste.
Enrich360 uses technology from South Korea – which has banned food waste in landfill – to macerate, heat and dehydrate food scraps. Odours are removed, and volumes reduced by up to 93 per cent – so a restaurant producing 200 kilograms of food waste each week can reduce it to between 15kg and 20kg. The resulting powder is sterile and pathogen free, rich in nutrients and nitrogen, with the consistency of coffee grounds.
The resulting fertiliser is one of the best ways to enrich degraded Australian soils
“It smells like fruitcake or Christmas pudding and doesn’t attract vermin,” says enrich360 CEO, Dean Turner. “The resulting fertiliser is one of the best ways to enrich degraded Australian soils and retain moisture.”
Enrich360 collects the waste weekly – low volume and no smells, remember – and blends it with other producers’ waste to produce fertiliser and compost products. It’s collected in small, clean vans returning from produce deliveries, which reduces truck movements and removes smelly, noisy garbage trucks from the road.
The entire system is supported by an app which consumers can download to help them find restaurants using the technology. It can also provide traceability of the full circular flow from produce arriving at the restaurant, waste leaving the restaurant and fertiliser being used on farms to grow more produce.
the fastest processing of any dehydrator in the marketplace
Pricing starts just over $100 per week for a machine which can process 33kg of waste in eight hours – which enrich360 says is the fastest processing of any dehydrator in the marketplace.
The larger machines run on three-phase power and the weekly price includes delivery and installation, bins, signage, training, accreditation, maintenance, mentorship and waste collection. Prices increase with machine size and the options include 33kg, 55kg, 110kg, 220kg, 330kg, 550kg, 770kg and 1.1 tonnes.
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