Words by Smiley Team
The global food system is responsible for 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions – and a third of all food produced is wasted. This means landfill sites are filling up and food and fuel prices are rising, along with unemployment levels.
So what’s the solution to this problem?
Source is a crowdfunder aiming to be the pathway to local, sustainable food. It intends to turn food waste into energy, fertiliser and compost to grow healthy crops and create local jobs in our cities.
It’s being run by Mad Leap, where Rokiah Yaman, 54, from London is director. “We're crowdfunding to scale up and demonstrate a circular, zero-waste approach to managing our food, waste and energy called Source,” she tells Smiley News.
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“It combines advanced waste management with smart urban farming with a sustainable business model that supports local training and employment. Our goal is to see bio-resources managed locally and for the by-products to be used for food production for local consumption.”
It was the desire to do something for the environment that could stand on its own feet, says Rokiah.
“By decentralising some of our food waste management and ensuring the benefits support local economies, we can strengthen resilience with lower risk/cost infrastructure at a time of global uncertainty,” she says.
Source is designed to scale horizontally to form networks of circular food ecosystems across cities, towns and villages.
“We aim to set up an open source learning platform so that local expertise can develop and support global uptake,” she explains.
"In developing countries, the benefits are even greater. Source not only recovers nutrients, fibre and water for food growing, it also generates clean renewable energy. For countries where electricity supply and waste infrastructure is poor and fertilisers are expensive, this model will provide a ground-breaking zero waste approach that creates lasting social, environmental and economic value.
“What we establish and get right here therefore, could have a real impact for less privileged countries. We have partners in Nigeria and Malaysia waiting to replicate the model.”
We need change at so many levels, she says, so “supporting this project will help launch Source into the world to improve, not only the way we manage waste, energy and food, but also how we think about waste in the first place”.
“We've found that human-scale technology engages people and makes the value of waste tangible, which can in turn change behaviour - an area as important to address as the technology and methods we use,” she adds.
Find out more and donate to make Source become a reality on crowdfunder.co.uk.
