Recycling Business - Greenes here?

Hello All,

Love this website and is a great place for Property and business lovers coz it has both forums in one.

Not sure if anyone else out here who feels the same as me but i always wanted feel there is enormous opportunity to save the environment for our future generations whilst making lots and lots of money.

There is a saying you all know " one man's treasure is another man's trash" precisely the point is turning something like garbage into something useful.

Something that no body wants and turn it into cash. Or even better people pay you to get rid of it!!!!

I've seen classic examples like :
1. grass clippings, cut down trees then resold as premium soil
2. old cardboard boxes then resold for premium paper
3. used cans, etc resold to reproduce new metal products

Finally, a valuable waste that not many people classified as "GOLD" and that is FOOD WASTE.

Now, i have read many articles and documentaries about food scrap being turned into valuable energy or fertiliser and sold to the farmers in the wild wild west.

Have you ever counted how many kilos of waste food you have dumped into your bin each week?

Would be nice to talk to someone with the same interest and shares the same vision and opportunity????

 

there is definitely money in it!! have you seen the prices at a metro tip lately!! but there's also big operating costs. still its definitely an ever-changing industry of the future. and if your not making money out of it someone else will!
Ive done a lot of work with sewerage treatment plants, they are now using the methane gases to generate energy and power the plants. Plus plants in rural areas, (big one at tamworth i worked on) are re-using the treated water for irrigation, not quite drinking quality but good for crops (mostly lucerene and animal feed, not so much human consumption i believe)

 

exactly Bob. sometimes i feel all the old food scrap i throw away in the dump just ends up in land fill. I really want to work with a group of people who can make this work.

I think raising capital shouldnt be a problem but getting the network of customers like farmers will be a little harder.

I see so much opportunity now and iam sure later once it is an established industry and people see the worth of food waste then it wouldnt be a profitable company.

maybe we should start up a consortium?

 

sounds like hard work and a lot of green tape!! i should have added im not a greeny and hate green tape but im all for practical solutions, especially if they make money!!

doesnt the food scraps from households (should) go into the green bins then council mulchs it or sells it to private compnaies??
You can probably take the existing technology and just take it to regional areas, being from sydney you'll have 10 bins for your household for all sorts of crap but head interstate or regional and they still only have 1 in some areas! theres a market for smaller operators in the areas the "big guys" havent got to or their overheads are to high to make a profit.

 

Ever heard of composting?????????

 

I started a worm farm and now have about 5 of em going at once. By the time the 5th is full the 1st one is pure soil. Only takes about 2 months.

This is for vegetable matter only, but other stuff such as meat, bread scraps, pasta etc could be kept in a different bin which is established to attract black solider flies to lay eggs. The eggs or lavae can then be fed to chickens as it is high in protein. I haven't tried this yet, but check out this video

 

The problem with collecting food scraps off individual houses is that it would be so much work for not much result. If turning it into compost, you must realise who you'd be competing against? You'd be competing against people in rural areas who's business is set up on cheap land, who get in semi trailer loads of chook and cattle manure, and then also buy weather damaged hay off hay farmers, or cereal straw off grain growers, that also turns up by the semi trailer load. They then use enormous amounts of water and $200,000 dollars worth of tractor and machine to wet it and turn it for weeks on end. They then truck this compost to the users in semi trailer loads.

Seriously, I don't see how anyone could make it work when talking such small household amounts? Imagine if you got 20 kilos off each house? How many houses to equal a 20 tonne truck load of manure?

It's a well established business out in rural areas. It's not like you've thought of something new?


See ya's.

 

Why throw away food scrape?

all off cuts of meat... whack them in boiling water.. make a stock.

all off cuts of veg... whack them in boiling water... make a stock

throw boiled veg and meat in your garden bed...

free fertilizer and free stock..

Saves cost of fertilizer and buying stock!

 

Our neighbourhood has a group of vegetable scrap recyclers.

We pay $5 per week and they give us a smaller container for uncooked fruit/veg, coffee grounds, tea bags. They collect each week and take it away to their compost/worm farm. A couple of times a year we receive some fertile soil back.

 

Penrith council have mini recycle bins the size of an ice cream container for inside along with small biodegradable bags for food scraps in the kitchen then easily transfer to your compost or to the green bin

 

Waste is a huge business. One of china's main imports is waste from the good old US.
There are are number of ways of doing this.

There was a group in WA a while ago who were using food sourced waste to generate gas - which was then pushed through to a gas generator to power in to the grid.
It worked ok, but they ended up going broke (too much debt). They were on the right track just didnt have the financial backing.

Personally I prefer the method of plasma gasification. It is far more versitile and 'eats' more waste types. 'Green waste' is actually has pretty poor engergy qualities.
It ultimately comes down to the business model. once up and running you can operate it in a way where the only input is the waste and the only output is ultimately carbon.

Some countries in europe are so efficent at processing their waste they need to actually import other countries waste in order to keep there generators firing. Meanwhile Abbot was worried about wind farms...(no wonder hes out).

ps - Im actually one of the least green people I know (I work for an oil company). So nothing to do with saving the earth, it just interests me.

Blacky

 

cool thanks blacky - interested in developing a joint partnership? iam more interested in other saving the environment while making money