Sinba: Circular and Inclusive Food Cycling

The amount of waste resulting from the production and sale of food is significant (50% of all waste from cities), and the solutions to dispose of it in most developing countries, both formal (landfilling) and informal (dumpsters), causes significant negative impacts (CO2 emissions, pollution, diseases, etc.)

We are innovating in waste management in the food sector in Peru, providing a circular and inclusive waste management service for food businesses, picking up organic and recyclable waste and then converting the organic waste into inputs for farms such as animal (pig) feed and organic fertilizers, which we provide to urban farmers, whom we connect with our network of food businesses to close the loop.

Our solution helps create strong, resilient and healthy local food economies, to help alleviate poverty while reducing pollution and GHG emissions derived from poor waste management practices which are a reality in most developing countries today.

In Lima, where we currently work, organic waste amounts to 52% of total urban waste. If we add the inorganic recyclable waste (26%) to this, we could be recycling up to 78% of the waste that is currently produced. Nonetheless, today in Lima we recycle only 4% of the total, with all the rest ending up in landfills or illegal dump sites, basically becoming pollution. This situation repeats itself all over the world, especially in developing nations.  We are wasting thousands of tons of natural resources that could serve us as animal feed or fertilizer for the land, to generate a much healthier, resilient and productive local food production system.

On a social level, there are about 35 thousand informal recyclers and 8 thousand informal farms (Census of Recyclers, Ciudad Saludable 2015) that receive mixed trash which they feed to pigs, in clandestine farms, under conditions of high vulnerability.

As to recyclers of inorganic materials (paper, plastic, glass, etc.), 87% of them still operate informally. Recycling remains a bottom-of-the-pyramid activity and recyclers are marginalized and usually remain among the poorest members of society, as they are paid very low prices for the material they recover by the intermediate wholesellers.

1) Teams at food companies: we started working mostly with restaurants, but have now also successfully applied our program to school dining halls, supermarkets, and industrial facilities. Our program requires us to train all staff in sustainable waste management practices, and thus far we have trained over 2,200 people. Our goal is that eventually, recycling organic waste becomes the new norm, so that no food will end up in a landfill.

2) Urban Pig Farmers: In Lima, there are an estimated 10,200 urban pig farmers, mostly on the periphery of the city, who use mixed trash to feed pigs, creating serious health and environmental problems. We supply them with healthy feed at a fair price and work with them to transform their farms into suppliers of local, sustainable fare. We are already working with 12 such farms, who not only replace mixed trash with our processed feed, but also to train them on best practices for the sustainable and productive management of their farms.

3) Recyclers: We have partnered with associations of recyclers, also known as urban wastepickers, in order to grow together. They provide logistical services and inorganic waste recycling and we provide them a steady income.

We are the first company in Latin America provide a circular food waste management service for food businesses, picking up organic and recyclable waste and then converting the organic waste into inputs for food production such as animal (pig) feed and organic fertilizers, which we provide to urban farms, whom we–once they reach health and safety standards– connect with our network of food businesses to sell their products and thus, close the loop. Additionally, we recycle inorganic recyclable materials in partnership with formal recycling cooperatives, and when added to the organic waste recycled, are able to reduce by up to 95% the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.

Our main innovation is our Sinba Cycle:

1) #sinbasura (zero waste) program: companies enter a subscription agreement and pay a monthly fee that includes training to deploy best practices in waste management, granting a certification for good practices.

2) Collection service: we collect organic and recyclable from subscribed member daily, which amounts to about 80-90% of all waste generated, through a partnership with a cooperative of recyclers, creating formal jobs in a highly informal sector.

3) BioFactory: we process organic waste into sustainable pig feed through an innovative biotechnological process. A fraction of the organic waste that is not ideal for feed production is separated to be composted at our Farm, so 100% of organics get recycled. Likewise, all recyclable materials are recovered by our partner recycling cooperative, who thus earn additional income avoiding the landfilling of recyclable waste.

4) Sinba Breeders Program: We sell the pig feed to urban farms at a fair price (much cheaper than balanced feed) and provide them with technical assistance to help them transition towards a sustainable model, with an emphasis on animal welfare. In this way, these farms go from informal and polluting practices to becoming suppliers of high-quality local food for the city, alas at much better return for their products.

One area we are developing is the processing of data about waste streams. There is very little data about waste, especially food waste, available to private and public actors in Peru. We strive to develop an image recognition technology with machine learning, so that everything that comes through our process gets weighed and analyzed. This will allow us to provide detailed reports to our clients that will allow them to save money while wasting less food.

Our innovation arises from a combination of various factors:

• We are addressing a problem that nobody else seemed to want to address and doing so from an entrepreneurial and sustainability perspective. Dealing with trash is usually not a “sexy” area and, especially in a country like Peru, traditionally does not elicit innovation.
• Our business model connects existing actors (food businesses, urban farms, and recyclers) who were previously highly unlikely to collaborate and creates a flow of materials and information that formerly did not exist, strengthening the relationships in the ecosystem and creating value for all those involved.
• We are implementing innovative technology to process food waste into high-quality animal feed and simultaneously gather valuable data that can serve as feedback to businesses to become more efficient in order to save money while wasting less food.
• On the back of the Sinba Cycle, we are targeting a segment of the farm market, namely small-scale, informal urban pig farms, that has traditionally been uncharted territory for businesses due to its social and economic complexity. There are thousands such farms and we believe small interventions can have a big impact here.   We are a Certified B Corp and strive to not only run a profitable and innovative business, but to create a purpose-driven movement of people who take action towards a more sustainable lifestyle.

There is one core technology to the Sinba Cycle: the BioFactory.

The BioFactory is an industrial processing plant that is mainly designed to process organic waste into animal feed, today mainly for pigs. The end product is a fermented wet feed and the hardware of the plant consists of the following processes:

• Material reception and loading
• Quality control on a conveyor belt to remove inorganic materials or organic materials unfit for animal consumption
• Grinder to turn waste pieces into a slurry
• Sterilization tank
• Fermentation tanks
• Finished product storage and dispatch to customers

It is important to add that there is a system of scales built in that gathers data in all stages of the process. The most interesting data is gathered at the conveyor belt, where waste food is identified and registered on a camera. The data and pictures are sent to customers in a monthly report to provide feedback and food waste streams, in order to help them become more efficient. We are looking to develop an image recognition system through machine learning that will enable us to streamline and automate this process as we scale.             

Our Theory of Change is as follows:

Activities:

1.1 Sale of subscriptions for businesses to join

1.2 Implementation of waste management system and training at businesses

1.3 Operation of waste pick-up routes

1.4 Operation of BioFactory for processing of organic waste

2.1 Sale of pig feed to urban pig farms

2.2 Technical assistance to pig farms 

3.1 Connect farms with food businesses

3.2 Manage relationship with recycler cooperative  

Outputs:

1.1 Tons of waste recovered (organic + inorganic)

1.2 # of businesses subscribed

1.3 # of people trained

2.1 Tons of animal feed produced  

2.2 # of farms selling directly to formal market

3.1 $ of income generated by farmers

3.2 $ of income generated by recyclers  

Short-term outcomes (results): 

1.1 % of waste that is recycled – goal: less than 1% gets landfilled

1.2. Reduction of environmental impact from waste management (measured in CO2 emissions and soil and air pollution)

2.1. Improvement in environmental standards in urban farms (no soil and air pollution)

2.2 Improved productivity of urban farms  

3.1 Improvement in income for urban farmers

3.2 Improvement in income for recycler cooperative  

Long-term outcomes (impact):

1. A waste-free world, meaning a circular management of all waste flows

2. Cities sustainably produce over 50% of the food they consume, using all the locally available resources to do so

3. Generate high-impact opportunities for social sectors who are in a situation of vulnerability

We have listed 3 groups of beneficiaries:

1. Teams at food businesses

Current: 2,400 trained

In 1 year: 5,200 trained

In 5 years: 32,000 trained

2. Urban Pig Farmers:

Current: 12 served

In 1 year: 28 served

In 5 years: 120 served

3. Recyclers:

Current: 8 jobs created

In 1 year: 18 jobs created

In 5 years: 80 jobs created

In one year, we would like to reach more than 100 businesses and have completed implementation of our BioFactory 2.0, which means an upgrade in technology and scale to process up to 50 tons of organic matter per day at much lower cost. This will allow us to work with over 30 farms, recycle over 7,000 tons of organic waste in a year, which get reintroduced as high value-added input for sustainable, local food production. Hereby we reduce carbon emissions by over 10,500 tons and contribute to a more resilient food system. We also will have begun developing our data automation and traceability system, having completed a first stage which is the automated reporting system.

In 5 years, we will have replicated the BioFactory and will have recently opened our 5th site, 3 of them in Peru and 2 in neighboring countries Chile and Colombia. We process over 100,000 tons of material per year that get reintroduced as inputs into the food cycle. We have a world-class biowaste innovation lab that has developed several further innovations that allow us to produce better inputs for local food production at lower prices, thus impacting millions through increased food security. Organic waste recycling is the norm in Peru and we have participated in legal initiatives to make landfilling it illegal.

1. Technological development: One key hurdle we hope to validate through this grant is the development of a replicable, scalable technological package for the conversion of organic waste into animal feed. As mentioned, this is a pioneer technology for Latin America.

2. Formal market validation for farm products (pig meat) from small urban farms: Under the current model of informal production, the meat produced from the urban pig farms is unfit for human consumption and only sold in informal, unregulated markets. Changing this will require an intense and continuous program to improve farming practices, but will have an immense impact, not only on the incomes of these farmers but also on the social and environmental conditions of the city, and on food security in general.

3. Complex social context: It is important to put into context the population we are working with. The urban pig farmers in Lima are part of a highly marginalized social group, and as such it is not uncommon to encounter situations such as illiteracy and in general very low levels of trust towards outsiders. This context provides a major challenge when entering into the program and wanting to transform the way things are currently done.

1. Technological development: We have identified and are already in touch with experts on 3 fronts to speed up our learning process.

- Swiss mechanical engineers for the technology for grinding and separating organic from inorganic waste

- Japanese experts in microbiology for animal feed in order to develop the fermentation process for the pig feed

- Peruvian experts in process engineering in order to make the production line as efficient as possible.

2. Formal market validation for farm products (pig meat) from small urban farms. We have two strategies to overcome this hurdle:

a) We have created a certification programs with 4 levels of implementation of best practices. Farmers "graduate" once they complete certain standards.

b) Connect with subscription member food businesses eager to buy locally sourced, high-quality products.

3. Complex social context. So far, we have applied several strategies to mitigate this risk, with good outcomes:

a) Find the social leaders / influencers of an area and put special emphasis on convincing them to join the program. Once they start, the rest will usually copy them.

b) Use diverse and collaborative pedagogic tools: technical language and traditional strategies will have limited effect. Through games and experiential learning techniques we have been able to achieve much better results.

c) Co-create work plans and actions to take with them: the construction of the program is designed as a collaborative process, not an imposed, pre-fixe set of measures. 

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Full time staff: 10 people

Contractors: 8 people

What sets us apart is the fact that we are willing to dive deep into an issue like waste management, that very few people get to know on a deep level, especially in a country like Peru. We have witnessed first hand the difficult situations many have to endure in this field, which is what drove us to dedicate our lives to providing high impact solutions through a radical collaboration approach, working with actors of society that are usually cast aside.

We are a highly diverse team that combines not only different disciplines, but also different generations and socioeconomic backgrounds. One of the founders is over 25 years older than the other two, and provides a different, more experienced mindset.

The management team has 2 engineers in the field of food industry and animal husbandry, 2 business developers and 1 management specialist. We also combine skills in sustainability and innovation with entrepreneurship and sales expertise, making us a quite unlikely team.

We currently have several key partnerships:

ACAVIDA Recycler Association: They provide logistical services and are in charge of recycling the inorganics recovered, which makes our value proposition more integrated and robust.

University Cayetano Heredia: We are co-developing a solution to develop probiotic feeds with their microbiology lab.

Our business model relies on two main sources of income:

1) Monthly subscription to the #sinbasura program for food companies: we operate a waste management service that includes setting up bins and training staff to segregate properly, which allows us to collect and recover organic and recyclable waste. Our main customers are restaurants, hotels, schools, company dining halls.

2) Sale of processed feed for pigs to urban pig farmers, developed from food waste as the main ingredient. The feed is sold at a social price (about 50% less than comparative balanced feed). We are aware that this price is below the real value of the product, yet it is a market entry price that helps us generate a large social impact. Urban pig farmers in Peru are mainly very poor, marginalized and operate informally.

Our strategy to financial sustainability consists of a strong revenue generation model through the two income streams mentioned above, that have helped us reach breakeven at current scale for the first time in March of this year. We are now looking to raise additional capital to finance our growth plan, which consists of doubling our capacity this year and multiplying it by 10 in the next 2 years.

The challenge we are solving, which is to create value-added products from waste biomaterials, has an almost unlimited innovation potential. We believe that in order to truly become unstoppable, we have to become a platform for innovation. This does not mean we have to invent new solutions, but it does mean we have to connect to partners how have complementary know-how, where we can leverage important win-win scenarios. For example, there is huge potential for extraction of essential oils or specific nutritional compounds, little of which has been taken to scale. As we receive several tons of biomaterials every day, we can quickly and cheaply gain access to the materials needed to make these solutions work at scale and at much lower cost.

Another area where we seek to collaborate is in the data capture, image analysis and traceability system. We envision this as a fully automated system that captures relevant and high-quality data about the waste streams coming into our BioFactory in order to provide detailed feedback on aspects like the amount of food waste and potential savings for our clients, as well as a robust traceability system that ensures that waste is sustainably disposed of, a major concern in a place like Peru.

Finally, we are very interested in opportunities for smart funding and impact investors, of which MIT has an impressive network.

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  Companies that are working to tackle food waste. In the U.S., we have mapped SpoilerAlert and Quest Resource Management as interesting actors.

Companies that develop technology to make the recycling process more effective and efficient, such as AMP Robotics.

Academic research institutions focused on biomaterial recovery and big data, and image recognition by machine learning.

Impact investors interested in investing in the circular economy in the developing world, such as Closed Loop Partners, a VC fund.

With the AI Innovations Prize we would be able to develop our machine learning image recognition system. This system consists of a centralized data processor that receives data from smart scales and cameras placed on top of our conveyor belts, where all materials flow through. This system collects and analyzes data at such a detailed level, that we will able to provide unprecedented feedback in real time on food waste streams and potential savings to our customers in order to promote strategies to reduce it. It would make our BioFactory the first biomaterials recovery plant to incorporate such a technology.  

The power and importance of this solution is based on three distinct factors:

• It will greatly strengthen the business case for companies to hire Sinba and thus invest in a sustainable waste management solution, as detailed data leads to savings from reduced food cost.
• There is virtually no data available about waste in general, and even less so in specific fields such as food waste, which makes up about 50% of all solid waste from cities in Latin America. This data could inform public policy decisions in order to reduce waste and handle it much more sustainably.
• Reducing food waste has been recognized as the 3rd most important action we can take to tackle climate change, and the impact comes not only from the reduction in emissions from waste disposal, but also from the reduced pressure on agricultural systems leading to higher food security.

We would use the GM Prize to invest into development of our probiotic fermentation manufacturing technology, which would be added to the finished product and can provide a big improvement in the quality of the animal feed we produce. Beneficial microbes have a huge role to play in biomaterial recovery, and we are only scratching the surface on the potential in this field. The fermentation we hope to develop provides the following benefits:

• Strengthens the immune system of the animals, reducing the need for medicines and especially antibiotics. This is especially relevant in cities with high levels of pollution such as Lima.
• Makes nutrients more readily available to the animal. Microbes pre-digest many complex forms of nutrients and make it easier for the animal to absorb them.
• Increases the shelf life of the product. Our current product lasts about 3 to 4 days before it begins spoiling. With proper fermentation, we believe we can extend its life to over 15 days.

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