thoughts

[Emily Fisher]

Some thoughts from the thinking and research I've done tonight:

One nice thing is that the business model would be, I'd imagine, a pretty linear relationship.  Once we figure out how much we could sell a unit of compost for and how much the personal containers hold, we can develop a pretty reliable correlation.  We would just need to impose some restrictions like you must wait until your bin is full until putting it out for pickup.  Once we did something like that, though, it would just be (waste quantity collected)*(selling price of composted fertilizer per unit)*(1 - % customer's cut) - (operating costs) = profits.  I think.  Everything would be fairly consistent and predictable if we can estimate linearity.

I really like the idea of incentive levels.  A percentage of the profits is a great idea because it could get people on board about earning back their initial investment.  Alternatively, a certain amount of compost could also be a cool option which we'd probably make even more money off of.  There could be incentives for bringing your own waste to the center, and there could be punishment for things like forgetting to cancel your collection for the week if you don't have any compost to put out.  Lots of possibilities in terms of the marketing of the entire system.

There's a great sample business plan I found that happens to be about poop composting, but could apply whether we do poop or food compost.  I've added it to the dropbox and am also attaching it here.

That's it for me tonight because I'm tired and want to sleep on this all anyway.

Emily

[Nils Dahl]

All great points Emdawg that I agree with. From me, first some random thoughts + info from my research last night…

- Organic, compostable waste accounts for 1/3 of waste in landfills, matter that could otherwise be returned to the natural cycle through composting

- Composting reduces greenhouses gases, and has the opposite effect of putting organic matter into an incinerator or landfill

- Cost of transporting compost and organic waste is high, so this must remain a relatively local operation, on a city by city basis. Philly would be a great hypothetical starting point for this sort of thing, with great potential for finding a hypothetical farm to buy the stuff and place we can compost

- There is potential to work closely with local restaurants, cafes (coffee grinds are great for this) and markets (fish also great). We can have even a separate model or incentive plan for these people, or they can give it to us for free to say that they compost responsibly

- Option for certain customers to trade waste for compost. This basically allows people with small gardens to not actually have to compost if they don't want to, but still exchange there food waste for usable compost from us. Say like 2 parts food waste for 1 part compost in return

- Containers each customer has would be sized based on their household size and would be picked up every 1-2 weeks. Compostable food waste goes through different stages, and needs to be grouped together in 2 week periods so waste can carry out a process together, more or less. 

- The container has the chance for high design. Important factors include ergonomics, cleanliness, ease of removing inner container, air tight, factors that aid initial stages of composting, integration into pickup/dropoff system we design, aesthetics in kitchen

- Right now, compost sells for anywhere from $8-$50 per cubic yard. This depends on the quality of the compost (what was used to make it and how carefully that process was monitored and carried out). Different grades are aimed at different target markets. Compost from mostly food waste, especially organic food waste, will sell for much more than that from leaves and grass clippings.

Some Sources

Cornell Composting - ton of info on composting http://compost.css.cornell.edu/index.html

Hippie Forums - This is one random thread but there are many good ones

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg0521514927623.html?23

This guy is a hero of making and selling his own compost in the US. Everyone online seems to know him, which is weird.

http://www.captaincompostalabama.com/biography.htm

There are more, but I don't want to overwhelm. Philly Compost website also has some good information. I would like to email the woman who heads it and ask her a few questions soon if we decide to move forward.

There is also legislation on making and selling compost that needs to be considered. Here are PA's laws… 

Pennsylvania

Contact Agency for Composting Regulations: 
Department of Environmental Resources 
Bureau of Waste Management 
400 Market St, 14th Floor 
Harrisburg, PA 17101-7381 

Information Source: 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Code, Title 25, Environmental Resources 

An operator of a yard waste composting facility can avoid getting a composting facility permit can do so by making a notification to the Environmental Resources Dept. Prior to sale, utilization or disposal of compost, the operator must provide the department with a written chemical analysis of the compost. If the department determines that the compost has the potential for causing pollution, the compost must be disposed of at a permitted disposal facility. 
A permit is required for land application of sewage sludge. 
There are no rules regulating the end-use of compost.

So in general, I feel a lot better about this project than the port-potty. I feel like all the research in PPs was also meant to get us to this place. Personally, this seems like the next logical step from where we are, a spin off the business model we developed, replacing PPs with composting bins, and allowing us to expand our potential market, and get into a bit more of a desirable area than poo. Something just clicks with me like, yes, this is it.

Nils

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Nils Dahl

484.695.6724

[Eric De Feo]

This reminds me of the idea of that green social network I had...but more achievable.

One interesting fact, this one composting company charges $2 fees for every non-compostable piece they find in someone's bucket.

That said, besides this being a good systems engineering proposal, I'm struggling to see where the design of the physical components will be interesting. I'm not sure why this would have to be more than an airtight, stackable container, with a biodegradable garbage bag. Right now, services have buckets, so we could make it slightly more ergonomic and easier to transport... not sure I see that needing to be anything more complex. As Julie said, she just has this bucket under her sink, so I'm not sure having a better bucket will improve the quality of the compost (which may become an interesting question). By having a service, I wouldn't want people to deal with worms etc, because that's part of the incentive to compost, but to just fill the bucket with food. 

By ditching the poo (while not as glamourous), you lose a lot of interesting design factors...also the interesting challenge of making it marketable. We also have to explain to Sarah and Peter why we didn't move forward with working with porta pottty distributors. Our issue is throwing out ideas without doing the dirty work of crunching numbers. They may see this option as an easy way out... just my thoughts for now

We may consider this as future line of products, and focus on the design of the outhouse component... 

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upenn m.arch + m.s.e. '13

ericdefeo.com / 914.772.2828