The week of Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, Wetsus and Rabobank held their 2009 Water Business Challenge. Kealan Gell and Guy Blanch won a scholarship to develop a business plan for the Community Composting Network’s (CCN's) Anaerobic Digestion Steering Group. The competition was based on a 10 minute powerpoint presentation (slides presented here).Click on the slides image for an expanded view.
The exercise was to adapt our environmental, charitable activities into something that can make money, and be interesting for investors. The focus is on blackwater, however it could also be expanded to food waste.
The customer is sold a service - complete reuse of blackwater from their building, including the production of biogas for use on-site. The customer does not have to change their habits, the same toilet can be used, with the addition of a small, discrete urinal for both men and women. All maintenance and operation is covered by their lease fee of €100 per month, per installation. Depending on customer preferences, struvite fertilizer may be used on site,or picked up during maintenance visits (once per month) and composts and irrigation water used on site or flushed into existing disposal methods. If the customer prefers, a rooftop garden or greenhouse cropping system may be installed and maintained for the use of composts and irrigation water (this is determined site by site). The customer pays €11,000 for installation of the basic system, but does not own the system, rather leases it (including a service) for €100 per month.
Our team is local - have over 200 Community Composting Organizations across the UK, and we have an expert in your region who can provide maintenance as it is required. It is unlikely that more than one scheduled visit per month will be required, however the customer is assured that if he or she has questions or problems, someone will be able to visit immediately. This technology has been proven and demonstrated, and all installations come with a health and safety guarantee. All relevant regulations will be met.
Our team and our competitors - CCN has done 2 years of market research on what exists in small scale AD in the industrialized world. There is a large market gap, despite widespread interest from CCN members. Competitors are generally too big, complex and expensive, or do not provide a network and service package, or are not technically sound. CCN has hired world leaders in decentralized blackwater AD technologies, Lettinga Associates Foundation to review existing systems and produce a detailed design, construction guide and operation manual. This information will be published publicly, however most people, building managers, organizations are not interested in creating their own blackwater reuse system – however they might like to have one, for the biogas energy, fertilizer, and ultimately the green image and publicity that goes along with completely reusing human waste. Thus we offer this package.
