Closed Loop Calcium Recycling: Scrappy Pet Treats

Eggshells are nature’s perfect source of calcium-carbonate. The crystalline matrix of eggshell calcium provides much more surface area for digestion then calcium carbonate from inorganic sources and therefore is a superior, highly absorbable form of sustainable calcium. Eggshells are also listed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) as one of the top 15 food industry pollution problems. Our solution aims to leverage the health benefits of eggshells to tackle this waste problem. By diverting eggshells from the food and service industries’ waste streams and repurposing them into rich calcium supplements for people and pets, we will be able to reduce pollution and food waste, help alleviate environmental degradation, and establish circular products that are regenerative by design.

Calcium carbonate is currently harvested from limestone mountaintops and coral reefs across the globe using methods that are destructive to these habitats and unsustainable. As the industry stands, the big pharmaceutical companies control the calcium industry and alternative, environmentally friendly solutions are often overlooked. Additionally, companies in the food and service industries are paying upwards of $100,000 USD annually to dispose of eggshells in landfills, which are already near maximum capacity and tend to attract unwanted rodents and vermin. With nearly 18 billion eggs used annually in processed foods alone, it’s clear to see why this is quickly becoming a problem.

We want to solve this problem by diverting eggshells from landfills and offering an alternative solution to the pharmaceutical industry’s current offerings for the natural ingredients market. Eggshells, when processed properly, are a sustainable source of calcium that does not need to be mined and offers tremendous health benefits for humans and pets alike. Calcium from inorganic sources, such as limestone, have only a 20% absorption rate; eggshell calcium, conversely, is an organic source that has an impressive 80% absorption rate.

Currently, we are serving our community, our customers, and their pets.

We serve our community in Phoenix, Arizona through the collection and processing of eggshell waste at our facility.

We serve our customers through our pilot product, Scrappy Pet Treats. We’ve seen great success through the sales of our product on Amazon over the past year. Our customers are concerned about their pet’s health and about the environment. They see our product helping both.  

We serve pets. Pet health research shows that eggshell calcium helps build strong bones and teeth, aids in circulation, hormone distribution, muscular movement, and neuron transmission. Eggshells also contain magnesium, which regulates blood pressure and keeps the heart beating steadily. 

Most importantly, we want to expand to serve people by producing quality sustainable calcium supplements. Calcium deficiency (hypocalcemia) has been noted as a significant problem in low-income communities and can be life-threatening especially for children.  Also, medical studies associate low calcium intake to mood regulation and, specifically, to clinical depression, the most diagnosed clinical disorder.  People taking low-quality calcium supplements often believe that this natural product does not work so turn to psychotropic medications. The overuse of these medications is a well-documented problem. 

Diverting eggshells from the waste stream is our solution. We plan on doing this by recovering eggshells from a large number of egg manufacturers, bakeries, restaurants and hotels to be processed into calcium that is ready to be sold on the human supplement market, the natural ingredient market, as well as the pet industry.

Recovering eggshells means that the food preparation person intentionally separates eggshells from the waste stream and those eggshells are collected to be processed into calcium. Thus, pollution is reduced, the environment is not destroyed, landfills have less waste and products are recycled back into the circular economy. What was traditionally thrown out as waste is now being used to create high quality calcium.

The more organizations we get to recycle eggshells the less demand there is for mined calcium which in turn benefits the environment as most calcium on the market is mined from limestone mountaintops or stripped from coral reefs. Both of these mining practices cause environmental damage including habitat destruction, groundwater damage, and dust, to name a few. We want to stop the mining of calcium and start obtaining it from a sustainable waste stream source.

Scrappy & Scraps Gourmet Pet Treats has already proven that it is feasible to recover eggshells to create calcium-rich pet treats. Scrappy was awarded membership in Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability RISN (Resource Innovation and Solutions Network) program in order to expand the eggshell collection throughout the City of Phoenix.  Moreover, Scrappy has been successfully selling pet teats on Amazon for over one year now.

Creating behavioral change in the service industry through educating our clients on recovery and recycling of complex products makes us innovative; moreover, we extend the lifecycle of the egg buy creating products keeping us on the cutting edge of the circular economy.

We’re raising the bar for environmental sustainability in the food waste sector. To our knowledge, we’re the first and only calcium repurposing facility in the world that collects eggshells from the food and service industries that otherwise would have gone to the landfill. Our pilot product, Scrappy & Scraps Pet Treats, is currently the only pet treat company to incorporate reclaimed calcium from eggshells into treats. Our innovative, turnkey solution will leverage partnerships with these industries to not only educate and engage in circular economy concepts, but help them become part of the solution by reducing their environmental footprint.

Our core technology is a proprietary chemical-free homogenizing and pasteurizing process followed by the grinding of the eggshells into an ultra-fine powder to maximize absorption.

We tested our processes by having three independent labs test multiple batches of our calcium. They checked for pathogens, E. coli, semolina, and listeria: all results came back negative for contaminates. The perfect combination of calcium carbonate is 40% calcium and 60% carbonate parts per million.  All of our tested batches came back at 40% calcium and 60% carbonate.  Eggshells are, indeed, nature’s perfect source of calcium carbonate.

The basic core technology is the harvesting process coupled with a data base and logistics application to monitor the collection process, control the distribution, and coordinate the development of on-line education.

Behavior change is how we'll address this problem, eggshells need to be treated as a resource, not wate. Our own track record and data from our pilot Srappy Pet treats validates that our solution solves the problem while supporting the circular economy and the community we are serving. Moreover, third party testing confirms that we’re producing high quality clean calcium carbonate.

We’ve been successfully collecting and processing eggshells for over a year. The first nine-month pilot included 6 breakfast restaurants in the Phoenix metro area where we collected and processed over two tons of calcium.  For the pilot, the average weekly amount off collected eggshells was 21lbs per location, netting 126lbs of calcium per week. 

The current pilot includes ten restaurants, and we are currently collecting an average of 177lbs per week. Our goal is to divert and process 350 tons of eggshells from the waste stream per year per facility.

The community we serve and the circular economy are both positively changed by our organizational activity inputs, outputs, outcomes and impact:

INPUTS: Diverting eggshells from landfill, processing eggshells into calcium

OUTPUTS: Producing a marketable product, healthier pets

OUTCOMES: Less waste in landfills, happier pet owners

IMPACT: Cleaner environment, raising the sustainability bar in the pet treat industry

We’re currently recovering eggshells from ten restaurants in the Phoenix metro area, with a combined employee pool of 462 staff members. Our innovative recovery system serves these employees by educating them on the benefits of eggshells, and how they can be used at home. We encourage restaurant staff members to take some eggshells home so they can sprinkle them on top of their pet’s food for extra calcium. Once staff members learn that eggshells are also great for their home gardens and plants they get passionate and start treating the eggshells as an ingredient instead of garbage. This has happened at every restaurant; attesting to the fact that this recovery system changes human behavior for the better. Our goal is to scale to 100 restaurants in the next year this would serve approximately 4,620 people and their household members as they learn about eggshell recovery.

We’ve served over 817 retail customers on Amazon with three flaovors of Scrappy Pet Trets, and we’re on track to double that number this year. Our calcium will be sold on the natural ingredients market and baked into other brands products similar to Scrappy Pet treats so we’ll serve thousands of people and pets.

https://www.amazon.com/Scrappy-Pet-Treats-Dogs-Oven-Baked/dp/B07BTJQ4LY/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=scrappy+pet+treats&qid=1563713804&s=gateway&sr=8-4

https://www.amazon.com/Scrappy-Pet-Treats-Dogs-Oven-Baked/dp/B07BTNVWKW/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=scrappy+pet+treats&qid=1563713921&s=gateway&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.com/Scrappy-Pet-Treats-Dogs-Oven-Baked/dp/B07BTPW45W/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=scrappy+pet+treats&qid=1563713921&s=gateway&sr=8-5

Our goals are to change human behavior by enabling the recovery and recycling of a complex product; in turn extending the lifecycle of an egg and netting a marketable retail product. 

The first major goal is to scale our calcium reprocessing facility. The final outcome of year one is expected to be a fully functioning facility able to process 350 tons of eggshells per year.

Our second major goal for the next year is to sell our product to major national retailers.  Our goal is to negotiate and contract with a top-tier distributor that can store and deliver our products to major retailers in Arizona and across the United States.

The third goal for next year is to establish “Closed-Loop Calcium Recycling LLC”. This LLC will be used to market and sell the human supplement line of calcium products.  Closed-Loop Calcium Recycling LLC is at prototype stage, we’re building and testing our model, and are currently “pre-seed” stage. The MIT prize dollars would be used as seed money for this new extension of our business.

Within the next five years, we expect that we'll be producing high-quality eggshell calcium supplements for people. Five years from now our goal is to have opened multiple calcium reprocessing facilities in major cities in the United States, this will decrease mining efforts. We expect that our products will be sold in major health food, grocery store, and pet food chains in the United States and on our way to an international market.

The key barriers involve behavior change, market entry and scaling our processing plant.

First, we must create a bigger network of service industry facilities that will agree to recover their eggshells.  This involves both management commitment and ongoing staff training, crating behavior change. Second, we must develop an environmentally appropriate pick-up service to move harvested eggshells to the reprocessing facility.  Waste management is often a politically sensitive and competitive arena so we need sustainable, long-term processes and partners.

Another major barrier is market entry and distribution.  Getting a “place” on store shelves is very competitive.  We must have the ability to fully service big-box stores carrying our products. Building the right sales and support team comes with challenges, as does negotiating a winning deal with the right pet treat distributor.

Scaling the first processing facility to be able to process tons of eggshells will have a learning curve, as this is the first facility of its kind. There will also be growing pains will when hiring and training staff.  This is a new concept and will take extra careful training to translate prior skill sets to the employee’s new position.

Finally, competition is a large barrier particularly since the calcium industry is controlled by the big pharmaceutical companies. It is likely this will disrupt their business models and as a result, they won’t be happy about an alternative sustainable calcium source that they don’t control.

Forging key partnerships will help us overcome barriers by establishing ourselves in an industry controlled mainly by the large pharmaceutical companies. 

We’ve piloted several ways to pick-up the eggshells and deliver them to the reprocessing facility and found that we must do it ourselves for the sake of quality control. UPS and private currier systems were piloted; the lack of customer service was effecting our reputation. Picking up the eggshells ourselves gives us a chance to interact with our clients and give additional training as needed.

The solution for overcoming the scaling of the first facility is strong management oversight for controlled facility growth. We're working with the Arizona Commerce Authority’s program “Arizona Manufacturers Extension Partnership” to help us create a plan for growth, budget and compliance, they have a wealth of knowledge and have been very helpful.     https://www.azcommerce.com/programs/arizona-mep

Intelligent marketing will help us to get a foothold in the competitive pet world market. Contracting with the right distributor is essential. We have interviewed several distribution companies and have narrowed it down to two Arizona distributors Sunburst Pet Supplies and Navigrate Foods, they are both interested in representing our product and we are currently negotiating terms and initial order. 

https://sunburstpetsupplies.com/ 

http://navigreatfood.com/

Establishing Closed-Loop Calcium Recycling LLC and scaling our facilities to other major cities in the United States will be accomplished with time and patience. Controlled growth is key as is working with the FDA to make sure that our new products are in compliance.

George Gebran, developer and owner of Scrappy Pet Treats, Kenneth G Pollock, PhD, and Susan K Pollock, PhD, are the core solution team.  

Ken Pollock, PhD, started his career as a chemical engineer. After working in both private industry and in university settings, he switched career tracks to information technology.    As an IT professional he again worked in both private industry and academia.  He served as university VP at Arizona State University and Wright State University, Ohio.  When he left academia, he worked as an independent IT management consultant.  Ken is experienced in developing and managing start-up projects and has worked in the environmental/sustainability environment.  Ken received a "Green Pioneer" award in 2010 from the Arizona Business Journal for his work as CEO of EcoAid. 102

George Gebran was literally born into a restaurant business.  His family has operated restaurant businesses for three generations.  As such, he knows how you can realistically make sustainability innovations (such as harvesting eggshells) in restaurant/food delivery environments.  He has already created the Scrappy business using his own restaurants and the process and the final products have proved successful, both conceptually and financially.  It is George's vision that guides this project: his success in developing Scrappy is the starting place for this human-based solution.  83

Our Clinical Director is Susan K Pollock, PhD, a clinical psychologist who has worked in organizational development and project management, consulting with companies in the public, private and military environments (US Air Force).  She is experienced at working with teams of people to ensure that projects meet their scheduled goals with efficiency. On her clinical side, she specializes in depression recovery.

Scrappy Pet Treats won entrance to Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, RISN (Resource Innovation and Solution Network) incubator program.  Arizona State University (ASU) is a large presence in the community.  The RISN program is a country-wide competitive program which partners with the City of Phoenix to implement creative global economy solutions. 

The RISN Incubator is a niche business accelerator for entrepreneurs in the early stages of waste-to-product innovation with the goal of moving a circular economy in the Phoenix area forward further and faster.

RISIN incubator has provided us with:

• dedicated expert mentors.
• strategic advisement.
• introductions to industry stakeholders.
• access to technical experts in the field of material reuse, technology and the circular economy.
• business trainings on topics related to risk management, operations, and value proposition. 
• evaluated and pre-qualified for funding opportunities.

 Our business model, as a calcium manufacturer, is to be a business-to-business wholesale manufacturer, as well as a business-to-customer manufacturer. 

Our wholesale manufacturing side will sell our products to retailers, which then sell directly to consumers, which is the business-to-business model.

We’ll also sell our products directly to the customer through on-line platforms such as Amazon.  This is the business-to-consumer model.

Our key customers and consumers are people who want high quality products that are conscious of the environment. How do we provide value to the population we serve?

Divert waste from the waste stream resulting in less waste and rodents in landfills.   Preservation of mountains and coral reef.    Preservation of ecosystem.   Health benefits to people and pets.   Healthy treats, happy pets.

Education is an additional benefit; we are educating the food industry on the benefits of eggshell calcium.

Self-improvement surplus profits will be cycled back into the business, research and development.    

Capital

We’ve been self-funded to this point. We’re planning on having ongoing working capital to maintain our day-to-day operations and investment capital to put back into our company to support growth. To access this capital, we’ll continue to be self-finance through equity infusion, after which we may take a loan from the bank, or get a revolving line of credit.

Closed-Loop Calcium Recycling L.L.C. financial forcast:

http://www.scrappypettreats.com/files/closed-loop-calcium-recycling.html

Scrappy Pet Trests financial forcast:

http://www.scrappypettreats.com/files/scrappypettreats.html

Planning

Our financial planning will be flexible enough to allow for market changes and unexpected opportunities, but strong enough to keep us from veering into dangerous, unsustainable territory.

Sales and Profitability

We’ll need sales from our sustainable calcium and pet treats for profits. If our profit is too low, it will have a negative impact on our cash flow and increase stress throughout the organization. No or low profits leave no room for revenue or expense fluctuations and limit our ability to reinvest. We’ll never discount our product so low that we aren’t making the right margins, many startup companies make this mistake; they are excited to see their product on the shelf and negotiate a poor deal.

Internal Accounting

Taking the time for monthly reporting is critical to healthy, sustained growth. Creating a plan to review our finances on a regular basis allows us to adjust in time to reverse a negative trend or capture a unique positive opportunity. Solid financial reporting will be required to secure increased levels of capital support. 

We need to stop mining for calcium and start recovering it! 

We want to be a disruptive innovator in the calcium industry and we need to build strong partnerships to do so. "Big Pharma" is viciously competitive and we need support to stand up and present a natural, ecologically sensitive and more effective alternative. SOLVE can help us open those doors so that right people can hear about this solution which addresses environmental waste as well as economic development.

On the MIT SOLVE website there is a video of the Solvers who won.  I watched the video and the winners have an excitement that is contagious: I want our organization to be a part of that community! I know firsthand how powerful an incubator program is.  The experience at ASU RISN Incubator has been amazing for Scrappy Pet Treats and has helped transform my thinking.

Our organization is at pilot stage.  We need Solve’s support to help us accelerate our work, build the partnerships we need, and scale our business model. We have a strong “potential for impact” and feel that we align with Solve’s Circular Economy mission. The prize funding is helpful, however it’s the MIT validation and the cross-sector Solve community that we really desire to collaborate with.

We want to work with Egg Processor Organizations, to test and publish data supporting the superior quality of eggshell calcium. 

American Egg Board

https://www.aeb.org/

U.S. Poultry and Egg Association

https://www.uspoultry.org/

United Egg Producers

https://unitedegg.com/

We want to work with key industry leaders in the global dietary supplement industry and be fully compliant with all U.S. regulatory requirements and up-to-date on best practices an organization like; United Natural Products Alliance https://www.unpa.com/

We also want to work with the Natural Products Association, as they will advocate for our product regulation and FDA compliance. https://www.npanational.org/about/

The General Motors prize money would go directly to building out our new facility. We’ve budgeted $165,000 for constructing and equipping our new facility. The $50,000 prize money will go to designing and fabricating custom engineered eggshell grinding equipment for our new facility.

Our current eggshell recycling facility has a small footprint with small equipment, which limits our production to approximately 100lbs of calcium per day. We need to scale to a larger facility and build custom grinding equipment.  Our new facility will be able to process approximately 350 tons of eggshells per year. This facility will help divert 350 tons of waste from our local landfills. We’ll begin construction on our new facility in early October 2019 and project moving in, late November 2019.

This project gives General Motors the opportunity to invest in innovation, and new business models that advances the transition to a circular economy. Recovering eggshells at the 25 restaurants at the GMRENCEN complex would improve GM’s current composting efforts because eggshells are usually the last thing to compost. Let’s keep those eggshells out of GM’s compost and turn them into notorious dog treats this will extend the life-cycle of the egg while creating a healthy circular product.