Limadol

Our innovative approach is to:
Up-cycle Municipal food waste into insect protein and fats to use as animal feed!

The technology has been developed in China, Europe and is being implemented in Indonesia. It uses an insect, the Black Soldier Fly (or Hermetia illucens) that is native to the tropics and is found in nature in the Philippines.

Food waste is the largest fraction of waste in generated in cities, and when non-segregated and not treated, causes major problems for municipalities. Apart from taking up space in the landfills, its decomposition creates methane, a gas that contributes to global warming and non-segregated waste is more difficult to recycle, lowering its value.

A quick estimate puts the production of food waste at 1 kg per family per day. This would imply that Metro Davao city, with a population of 1.5mio, and an average family of 6, produces approximately 150 Tons of food waste a day.

On the other hand, protein sources for poultry and fish production are either fished from the oceans (contributing to the over-fishing crisis) or soya (often GMO) grown on large tracks that could otherwise be used for human food production.

Davao has numerous fish ponds and poultry farms, as well as numerous small-scale farmers with back-yard poultry farms.

LGUs in Davao are encouraged to segregate solid waste, but only few of the 182 LGUs do so, and of those who do, most divert their organic waste to very inefficient composting sites.

Our solution is to take the organic waste off the hands of the LGUs, and produce Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae to sell to fish and poultry farmers in the region and compost to sell to organic gardeners and farmers.

Our business model, that intends to be a social and ecological business, proposes in a first phase (3 years) to set up a composting centre for 5 tons of food waste daily, as a proof of concept and demonstration centre, and a Black Soldier fly nursery (to produce BSF eggs and 5 day old larvae – or LimaDOL).

During a second phase, we would then provide technical expertise, and set-up kits for micro-entrepreneurs to set up “decentralised” up-cycling sites to service the various Barangays of Davao city (and later other cities of Mindanao). We would then supply these with LimaDOLs and purchase their larvae to process into pellets – a more convenient way to store and transport the protein.

This business plan presents only the first phase of Business.