Compost trial grows a social business
A NSW EPA trial is turning worm and human heads, ending cafe food waste and preventing climate pollution.
Commenced before the virus interrupted cafe trading, then stalled by the virus and then continuing after lockdowns were lifted, the trial involved cafes in NSW city and country locations. Cafes in Chippendale (Sydney), and NSW country towns of Bathurst, Orange and Nundle put their food waste into the new composting product called, coolseats. It’s a seat above a compost below and in a raised garden bed. Wicking beds below the coolseat reduce water use by 80%.
Developed by John Fry in Bathurst and Michael Mobbs in Chippendale, NSW, the coolseat is highly efficient and turns food waste into compost in 3 to 5 weeks.
As coolseats are ventilated above and below ground, on all sides including through the base, they are fully ventilated. That’s why they produce no odour. The surrounding garden grows herbs and plants for the cafes and customers. The garden soil is fertilised and watered by the compost.
A cafe also gets a seat two to three people may sit on.
Some design and practical improvements have been made to the seats during the project that have been driven by cafe and customer feedback. The seats must handle at least 20 years of extremes of hot and cold weather, dry and wet times, and all the while continue to turn food waste into soil without creating odour.
As the seats have been tested and have proven themselves to the cafes and their customers, they’re now offered for sale on this website anywhere in Australia and overseas.
The seats are a social business. Half the profits go to local landscape regeneration projects in the city and the country wherever the seats are located. We here at coolseats are passionate about this goal we’ve set ourselves: we wish to keep local money in local communities.
Using only Australian-made materials and labour the seats keep both food waste and local money in local communities.
Thus, if coolseats are bought and to be used in, say, Victoria - or any other state, or country - coolseats will be made in that state or location by a local business which will also share in the sale and income. The same goes for overseas locations; coolseats designs and specifications are shared with anyone wishing to make them where they live or the business, school, facility is located.
If you’re a business or a school, or other institution or facility and are interested in buying or making coolseats for your location, local area or community please contact us and we’ll work with you; please email - michael@sustainablehouse.com.au.
Thank you, the cafes and NSW EPA
Thank you to each cafe for trialling coolseats and for giving us design and product feedback; your partnership is the backbone of the project and your examples are inspiring other cafes as well as schools, offices, businesses and householders. We’ll stick with you in the years ahead.
And thank you to the NSW EPA #lovefoodhatewastensw partnership for providing funding, guidance and support for the project to end cafe food waste in NSW.
Other projects and their partners, and some of those working to end food waste and who are also able to implement initiatives with the support of the NSW EPA are listed here. One partner listed there is Cornersmith Cafe, one of my favourite cafes. I recommend their how to cook videos - and their wonderful cook book, Use it all, is prominent in my kitchen with many well-thumbed pages - it has so many simple ideas for cooking and not wasting off-cuts, left-overs, and has such wide-ranging ideas that it clearly shows there is no such thing as waste, just a failure of imagination. (Nature wastes nothing.)
Thank you, too, to the coolseats team: John Fry, Bjorn Godwin, Elina Godwin, Reilly O'Byrne-Inglis and the many others who have got on the end of a shovel, put their laptop to work, used a camera, planted a plant, and shared your wonderful energy with us.
When we garden we grow something in ourselves and with those we garden with. May the worms be with us!