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This proposal was moved to: Land Use: Agriculture, Forestry, Waste Management 2018
This proposal was reopened in Waste Management 2016

Pitch

We offer a waste management solution for food businesses, collecting and processing organic waste into animal feed.


Description

Summary

The name Sinba is short for “sin basura”, which in Spanish means “without waste.” This is our mission. We dream of a world without waste, where everything gets reused and recycled.

In Lima, Peru, where we are located, more than half of what ends up in the landfill is organic waste. Our proposal is to gather a community of committed restaurants, food markets and catering services and provide them with holistic waste solutions. Out of the total waste these businesses generate, the proportion of organics is usually around 70%.

Our project contemplates executing a full loop, which implies:

  1. Training staff at food businesses to manage and segregate organic waste at the source
  2. Pick-up and transport of waste to our BioFactory through a partnership with recyclers.
  3. Transformation of organic waste into high quality animal feed and inorganic recyclables get recycled by partner recyclers.
  4. Sale of animal feed to urban pig farmers in Lima.

?

In Lima, every day around 10 thousand tons of waste get dumped into landfills or simple open air dumps. We are very aware that, in order to provide a solution to this problem, we will not be able to do it alone. And we are also aware that not only Lima has this problem, but that almost nearly all cities face a similar situation.

We believe in open innovation for scalable global solutions.

Website: www.sinba.pe


Category of the action

Reducing emissions from waste management


What actions do you propose?

Sinba seeks to directly contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation in several ways. One of first and most direct ways is by creating a community of businesses and people who want to participate in making a change, and organizing communication campaigns in order to create conscience about the problem and possible solutions, which we are already doing through social media and industry groups.

In addition to picking up waste, we plan on picking up used cooking oils from the food businesses and turn them into biodiesel, which we will use for all our logistical processes.

In terms of mitigation, there are three main positive impacts:

  1. Through our waste pick-up service, organic waste gets diverted from the landfill, leading to a direct reduction in methane emissions and a lessening of general pollution and pressure on waste dump sites.

  2. By using waste as animal feed, we greatly reduce the distance that this feed has to travel, as currently most of it gets imported from other countries.

In terms of adaptation, we have identified two main impacts:

1.     A strengthening of food security, as having a more localized sourcing and production leads to an increase in resilience. We plan on selling our products locally and mostly to the same establishments that provide us with organic waste.

2.     We plan on capturing fog as one of our main sources of water. This also increases our resilience in terms of water security.

There are three key policy changes that would allow for us to multiply our performance, and accordingly, our impact:

1.Putting a price on carbon: this would make energy intensive competitors that rely on fossil fuels less competitive and create a positive revenue stream.

2.A ban on disposing of organic waste in landfills and waste dumps: this would set the stage for mandatory solutions such as ours to be implement on every level, and has already been passed in California, France and on a commercial scale, Massachussets.

3.A zero-waste government program: many cities have already set a strategy to become zero waste cities. This would force stakeholders to seek solutions such as the one we are proposing.


Who will take these actions?

Sinba: social business in charge of articulating the community and different stakeholders, executing the circular solution described in the above answers and training others to replicate the solution across the country and eventually, the world.

Food businesses (restaurants, food markets, catering services): will be Sinba’s main allies by participating in the proposed solution and will be the clients that will allow for Sinba to thrive financially.

Chefs and important actors in gastronomy: are very important carriers of pride for Peru. They are important actors in creating conscience and community outreach.

Agro-Entrepreneurs: will be needed to replicate the model all over the country and, why not, the world.

Local governments: must provide the framework and incentives for on the ground waste management solutions.

National government: Must lead by implementing sensitive waste regulations towards a zero waste society.

Food industry groups / associations: Have a role of promoting solutions amongst their members and helping with efforts to lobby for positive changes.

Academia: gives research and development support in order to keep improving the proposed solutions and give a scientific backup to our claims.


Where will these actions be taken?

1st stage:

Waste pick-up in Lima food businesses and model Sinba Biofactory on the outskirts of Lima, Peru (30 km south)

2nd stage:

Replication of model in large and medium sized Peruvian cities such as: Arequipa, Cajamarca, Piura, Cusco and Iquitos.

3rd stage:

Neighboring countries’ main cities: Santiago de Chile, Guayaquil and Quito (Ecuador), Bogota and Medellin (Colombia), La Paz and Santa Cruz (Bolivia) and anywhere where we find this opportunity and people interested in executing it.


What are other key benefits?

One main benefit is the reduced need for landfills, as more than half of waste volume comes from organic waste. We believe landfills are a terrible solution for waste, and hope to ultimately contribute to a world where they are no longer needed.

One important benefit will be the creation of jobs and practices that enhance the sustainability of our food system. These jobs will require education and capacity-building and will seek to empower urban youth and to integrate cities with their food production sites.

By using food waste we will reduce the amount of imported corn and soy, the main staples of animal feed at present. These two commodities usually rely on subsidies and come from very far away. A large part of the soy consumed in Peru comes from Brazil, where the proliferation of industrial soy crops has been preceded by large-scale deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

 


How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?

One ton of wet food waste if decomposed in a landfill generates about 37.5 kg of methane. Taking a CO2 equivalency factor of 23 for methane, that would give us a number of 863 kg/tn of CO2e emissions. This being said, we expect to divert 223,015 tons of organic waste from landfilling in the first 5 years, which translates into an emissions reduction of 192,462 tons CO2eq.


What are the proposal’s costs?

We do not see our model as having economic costs, but rather of needing investment in order to survive and thrive in the initial stages, as we reach the point where we generate our own income. As Sinba has a business model designed for growth, after the initial stage we should be able to cover the further investment needed for growth through our self-generated funds.

A negative side effect, or rather a risk, is that the through improper handling of the organic waste the animals could become ill. This will be mitigated through a good handling process, especially in the sterilization and fermentation stages.


Time line

Short term:

Our waste management fleet is growing and the model Sinba Farm is fully operative. We have reached 20% of Lima restaurants and food markets with out waste management program. The training programs to train people for replication in other parts of the country are implemented.

There are 3 BioFactories and Sinba Farms set up and operating in different regions in the country.

Medium term:

50% of restaurants in Peruvian cities have implemented organic waste solutions. Half of Peru’s pigs are now fed with processed food waste and the technology has been implemented in several countries of Latin America.

Peruvian cities have resilient, local, organic food chains that allow them to be self-sufficient and have access to high quality food at a reasonable price.

Long term:

The concept of organic waste no longer exists, as all of it is reused in different optimized processes and agriculture is local, healthy and integrated into thriving ecosystems that provide food for communities while maintaining a healthy environment.


Related proposals

Food Recovery Network: Fighting Waste, Feeding People /  FoodRecoveryNetwork

SWEEP Standard-Solid Waste Environmental Excellence Protocol: LEED for MSW / sweepstandard and 4 others

Waste into Abundance - Capture lost foods via smart dehydration technologies! / Cornucopia Group

Low tech collection and processing of waste to Energy, Fertilizer, and Recycling / caonikute


References

Ermgassen, Phalan, Green, Baimford. "Reducing the land use of EU pork production: where there’s swill, there’s a way". January 2016. Food Policy Journal. Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge.

FAO, 2015. Food wastage foodprint and climate change. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/nr/sustainability_pathways/docs/FWF_and_climate_change.pdf

Brown, Sally. Connection: Climate Calculations. BioCycle Magazine. June 2013, Vol. 54, No. 6, p. 52. https://www.biocycle.net/2013/06/19/connection-climate-calculations/

Yang, Ji, Baik, Kwak , McCaskey,  2006, Lactic acid fermentation of food waste for swine feed, Elsevier, Bioresource Technology. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852405004165

FAO, 2016. Food prices monitoring and analysis. http://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/international-prices/detail/en/c/413771/

Colbert, 2012, The Pig Idea, England, http://thepigidea.org/

FAO, 2011, Global food losses and food waste.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/mb060e/mb060e00.pdf

Sustainable restaurant awards

http://awards2015.thesra.org/