Natural Capitalism: Compost
The elimination of garbage waste via Natural Capitalism
The objective of this group is to help get ideas, feedback, and resources for our business concpet. I would invite all who are interested in composting as a profitable business to give input and, if very inerested, become involved as we are actively looking for help to make this work. We have formed a company Energy Collective and are actively speaking wi ...learn more
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Jun 02, 2008
Updated: Jul 16, 2009
Membership: Open
Semi-Private
Topic: Fast food venues the perfect place to start...
Posts (1 - 6 of 6)
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Thank you S_
Yes fast fod places are a great place to begin - I'm going to post more of what we hvae been thinking soon, FYI.
I like Fast Food - because of their volume of disposabless that can be converted to biocompostables AND by getting a group of places we can acheive volume. However this same benefit creates a barrier: we would be dealing with a franchise type management that would want to see proven results.
Talking with the carting representative, who we are meeting with on thrusday, food manufactuering facilities look like a good place to start as they have high volumes of waste combined with space to store it. One of the challanges appears to be assuring sufficent volume in a small enough geographic area that it pays for the truck to make the run. (and we have found a company using Natural Gas Garbage trucks!!!)
I do love the idea of the fast food places though -- Jamba Jucie I think would be perfect -- they are still using styrofoam :-( Where do you think we should start? |
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Yeah, that sounds good. As far as fast food places, I think that McDonald's would be great because most of their packaging is paper already- except their drink cups and salad containers. I also think that coffee places are good. Tullys for example, advertises a compostable cup, but don't have a composting garbage can in store. Starbucks would also be a great place to start- I think that they would love to improve their popularity with green folks- being zero landfill waste might be a great angle...
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Love ll the ideas. This leads to a great debate on our end -- do we work with smaller businesses to refine the process and concept, or try to jump right in with a larger scale operation.
The first is easier as far as trial and error, while the 2nd gives us the volume and scale to be quickly profitable. |
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Hey just come into the thread. Some companies claim to be green. Ben and Jerry, Starbucks. We can actually examine their packaging to see if they mean recyclable or biodegradeable. I'm sure Ben and Jerry in vermont will love the idea to have a biodegradable ice cream cup for their shops.
Brian brought home a food service vendors business card from Morgan Stanley. You can plant the card into soil and there are seeds in it that will sprout.
http://www.nysar3.org/ seems to have some info that can help us. There is a summit in Oct. I hope we can have some actual cases by then so that we can talk to people about our progress. |
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We are now looking at NYC Local Law 1 of 2008 and biodegradible bags --
NYC Local Law #1 of 2008: The NYC Plastic Carryout Bag Recycling Law. |
I have to say that I am so glad that someone is doing this. I have been thinking this for a long time. If we could make compost out of packaging the world would be much better off. I read that the we are losing soil (among other resources) and turning packaging into compost could be an excellent way to (maybe) address the problem. Especially since everything is over-packaged.
I think fast food places would be an easy place to start. Most of the packaging from these places have a very short life anyway. If all the trash produced in the dining rooms were compostable then composters could just pick it up (no extra work for employees) and p
Once I was in a permaculture class with a guy who heated his water and home with the heat from his compost..maybe something like that can be applied on a larger scale??? Or energy can harvested from ones own waste (a little back to the future 2 but SF gets energy from compost so maybe?).