Indoor community composting in an educational circular system

“Our development is a composting system that actively helps in environmental education and awareness raising. With our solution, every community can actively contribute to a more livable and greener urban environment in a playful way.”
Emese Pancsa, Managing Director

Company name:

Compocity Kft.

Implementation year:

2022

Focus Areas:

Climate protection and climate adaptation, Waste management, Circular economy, Consumer awareness

Program Objective:

Compocity Ltd. is a sustainability service startup operating since 2020, supporting circular economy challenges in urban environments with a smart composting service. Through their activities, from sustainable practices in smart cities to improving soil health, workers are taking action against the impacts of climate change in a way that is driven and powered by community collaboration itself. A smart composting device and its playfully educational app with its tracking solution keep the value chain from apple pip to happy urban vegetation in one hand. Employees can thus be connected to ESG goals at individual and community level.

Program Measures and Commitments:

According to the UN, by 2050, seventy percent of the population will live in cities, with a significant proportion working in office environments. Thirty percent of office waste is organic green goods, for which Compocity has created an urban ecosystem system: CompoBot, a composting chef, uses a microorganism cocktail to create a nutrient-rich soil food. The cycle is provided by Compocity through its partnerships to care for the urban green issue, but where there is an openness to do so, communities themselves can participate in the process and return nutrients to urban soils and plants in the form of planting. This is complemented by a playful mobile app that allows office communities to monitor their work and environmental impact. All this has a community-building and educational power, in addition to the data collected to support companies’ sustainability efforts. The urban Miyawaki mini-forest method used by Compocity provides both urban compost utilization and a maximized community customer experience in a species-rich ecosystem, closing the urban loop. Not only is the home-grown method using native vegetation, but Compocity’s development includes a range of habitat creation activities from insect hotel making to synodu to increase biodiversity. Their message is that you can enter anywhere in the cycle either by installing Miyawaki mini-forests and creating nutrients for it, but you can and should avoid the creation of food waste in an easy, playful and value-creating way.

CompoBot monitors the material thrown in, sends feedback to the user and illustrates the usefulness at scale through everyday examples. A monthly report summarises for the company the equivalent activities of different CO2 emissions, key information on recovery and community activities, highlighting also the individual involvement of employees.

Program Impact and Results:

Currently reaching more than 15 large companies with nearly 20,000 users per day. Over the next 5 years, their impact will be: 75,000 Compobots in operation, 136,500 tonnes of organic material produced, 819,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions prevented, 15 million users reached per day, 45.5 million trees planted to channel their nutrient needs into various environmental benefit projects and to measure the benefits, provide feedback and further build the motivation system that makes corporate responsibility locally accessible.

Related keywords:

circular economy, food waste, community composting, sustainability pedagogy