Sarajevo does composting!
Šifra prijedloga: Hrana-nije-Otpad-2019-11-83
Transforming food waste into high quality fertiliser by providing unified composting system and procedures for citizens and business owners
Key problem
In our community food waste is almost always handled imporperly. Despite our best efforts to consume and optimise the amount of food needed in our households or businesses there will always be an excess amout of food and thus food waste. Keeping food waste out of landfills is essential. When food combined with other garbage sits in landfills and isn't exposed to oxygen it releases methane gas (more potent green house gas than CO2) into the air. Moreover, there is no viable option to compost in our city, which leaves those who are eager optionless.
Solution hypothesis
Transforming food waste into high quality fertiliser by providing unified composting system and procedures for citizens and business owners. The proposed solution consists of the following:
- Citizens and business owners
- Location of the composting
- Transport of food waste
- Staff
Reducing (food) waste to zero is an impossible task, and our solution provides the best way for managing that waste. Since our solution is focused on being accessible to everyone and does not require much upkeep cost we strongly believe that it will significantly reduce Sarajevo's food waste footprint. Besides that, propsed solution creates valueable product (in form of fertilizer) which circles back into local economy.
Prototype
Citizens and business owners would be encouraged and educated to separate their food waste and dispose it at designated locations. Regarding business owners there will be a predefined schedule for food disposal pick-up. Initally for citizens, drop off bins would placed at certain location in our town and their waste would be collected periodically.
Municipalities in KS and other government levels do posess land that can and should be utilized since is not at the current moment. Upon inquiry via the "Zahtjev za pristup informacijama" from "Zakon o slobodi pristupa informacijama u Federaciji Bosne i Hercegovine" (eng. Request for information, Freedom of Access to Infrormation Act) full list of the appropriate locations can be aquired. After the identification of the most suitable land further procedure for purpusing that land will be done.
The transportation will be organized as a part of the standard KJKP RAD route on a weekly basis. Such addition does not introduce big overhead into operations of KJKP RAD so we have high confidence in this proposition.
Workers will have the task to distribute the waste across a piece of land and collect the fertile land that is a biproduct of already composted food waste. As this biproduct is of high quality it can be sold or utilized, possibly at lower cost which reduces the need for chemical fertilizer.
These tasks are rather simple and do not requre big investment. This fact gives us further confidence into seeing our solution being implemented.
Feedback and lessons learned
From the results gathered after conducting a survey amoung 181 high school and university students (attached below) we have learned that there is a considerable interest amoung young people for this issue. A large portion of participants would compost if they had the proper set-up. A considerable amount was not familiar with the concept, and we highly believe that implementation of this project would spark interest and enthusiasm. This gives great hope and legitimacy to the cause.
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