Robotic insect farm startup Goterra will use maggots to help transform food scraps from Sydney households into animal feed and fertiliser, after scoring a new partnership with the City of Sydney.
The 2023 Smart50 Sustainability Award winner will deploy its modular robotic system to process up to 600 tonnes of food waste from Sydney residents during a trial that will initially run for 12 months but may be extended beyond this time frame.
The trail will begin operations later this year, and comes after Goterra inked a deal with Tasmania-based aquaculture feed supplier Skretting Australia at the end of May.
Founded in 2016 by former sheep farmer Olympia Yarger, Canberra-based Goterra has previously raised $18 million in external capital, and is working with the likes of Woolworths and Brisbane hospitality precinct Howard Smith Wharves to tackle food waste in a way that also produces protein-rich animal feed and fertilisers.
Placing 47th on the 2023 Smart50 Awards list in November last year, Goterra was recording annual revenue of close to $2 million and employed a team of 54.
In a statement on Thursday, Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore AO said working with Goterra is the council’s “next step in our war against waste”.
“This service will be set up at a facility in Alexandria, meaning our fuel costs and emissions will greatly reduce because we are transporting this food waste shorter distances,” she added.
“This is a brilliant circular economy result as we regenerate what was once considered waste into sustainable commodities: insect protein for animal feed and a natural low-impact fertiliser, both essential for food production.”
More than 21,000 households in the City of Sydney catchment are already part of a food scraps recycling trial, which has been running since July 2019. The council intends to extend this service to all its residents as part of the New South Wales government’s plan to offer food and garden waste collection to every household in the state by 2030.
The council estimates that food scraps make up around one-third of the waste that ends up in general household rubbish bins, and often end up in landfill, where they emit methane when decomposing.
Goterra’s solution feeds such food scraps to black soldier fly larvae housed inside shipping container-sized units. The larvae can consume twice their own body weight every day and produce manure, which can be processed into fertiliser. The maggots are then processed with protein that can be fed to fish and poultry, or turned into pet food.
Goterra CEO Olympia Yarger said the potential of the startup’s partnership with the City of Sydney cannot be understated.
“It has the power to revolutionise food waste management for residential food waste and logistics in Australia’s largest city,” she said in a statement.
“We know food waste represents 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If it were a country, its emissions would be the third largest in the world.”
Goterra already works with Albury City Council to process commercial food waste, and SmartCompany understands the company is in discussions with other councils nationally about the use of its technology to process residential food waste.
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Eloise is an experienced business journalist and editor, who has held senior editorial roles at SmartCompany since 2014. Prior to joining SmartCompany, Eloise was news editor at Books+Publishing, the trade press for the Australian book industry. Eloise has degrees in media and communications, marketing and business management, and political science. You can follow her on LinkedIn, and Twitter at @ellykeating.
