Tabemaru

DLX Design Lab - University of Tokyo

Tabemaru

TabeMaru fosters agricultural resilience by reclaiming nutrients from restaurant food waste and redistributing them to farmers as organic fertiliser.

Tokyo, Japan

JPN

Other, including part of a larger organization (please explain below)

We are in the process of spinning off a research project from the University of Tokyo (but still part of it)

Japan faces a concerning trend in food system resilience. As of 2024, only 38% of the calories consumed domestically are produced within the country, and nearly 90% of fertilizers used in agriculture are imported. This heavy dependence creates systemic risks when faced with global supply disruptions or price volatility, risks that extend to many developed economies relying on similar food system structures. At the same time, Japan has committed to transitioning 25% of agriculture to organic production by 2050, requiring a substantial increase in organic inputs. Yet food waste, rich in nutrients that could support this transition, continues to be incinerated, removing valuable resources from the agricultural cycle and generating unnecessary emissions. Black Soldier Fly (BSF) composting offers a promising method for recapturing these nutrients, transforming waste into agricultural inputs while reducing emissions. However, current BSF systems are predominantly industrial-scale operations requiring significant substantial space, infrastructure, labor, and climate control, making them inaccessible in many urban or small-scale settings. These limitations, combined with cultural barriers around insects and the practical challenges of manual waste processing, have prevented BSF composting from realising its potential as a localised solution for strengthening food system resilience.

We are developing Tabemaru, a compact Black Soldier Fly (BSF) composting system designed for small-scale food businesses such as restaurants, cafés, and canteens. These businesses produce a steady amount of organic waste but have limited access to efficient on-site composting options. Tabemaru enables them to process food waste into frass using BSF larvae, while minimizing odor, contact with insects, and maintenance requirements. The system is designed for integration into existing operations, making BSF composting possible at a local scale. Once the viability of our Tabemaru solution has been validated in a unsupervised environment, our broader vision for the project is to explore a reverse logistics model: in this model, the frass produced by the units is collected and redirected to farmers, ideally through the same supply chains that provide ingredients to participating businesses. This approach aims at creating a circular system that links food waste composting with regenerative agriculture and enables organic farming. If we manage to demonstrate the effectiveness of our composter and of the reverse logistic approach, our solution can play a crucial role for enabling circular food systems that can be deployed across different urban and peri-urban contexts.

Tabemaru serves small to mid-sized food businesses, such as restaurants, cafés, canteens, and food producers that generate consistent volumes of food waste but lack efficient on-site composting options. In Japan, these businesses are responsible for the majority of post-consumer food waste. By using Black Soldier Fly larvae, that can process food waste within hours, Tabemaru reduces food waste volume by up to 95%, significantly cutting storage needs and lowering waste collection costs. Tabemaru contributes to a lower-carbon food system by diverting organic waste from incineration and transforming it into nutrient-rich frass that can support local agriculture, helping close the loop between consumption and production. Equally important to tangible impact, in interviews with restaurant owners in Tokyo we discovered a shared desire for food businesses to demonstrate active environmental responsibility, enabling composting on-site can reinforce their ethos and brand identity and appeal to eco-conscious customers, partners, and regulators.