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TWO YOUNG IRISH women have come up with a solution to the stinky challenge of the ‘brown bin’ which is a feature in so many households.
There is a Government plan to roll out a new Household Food Waste directive with all 1.2 million households in Ireland to be required to segregate food waste from all other household waste by the end of 2016.
Not a bad idea if this food waste goes to compost but – as anyone with a compost heap or a brown bin already knows – the decaying food waste can cause quite the whiff as the bin/heap fills up.
Kate Cronin and Elizabeth Fingleton have just launched a new company, Obeo, to sell their compostable food waste box. The idea, they say, is to have the Obeo box on your kitchen counter – when it fills up within two to three days, you transfer it to your brown bin. Unlike traditional bags, the box is water-resistant and doesn’t drip when it comes to emptying the whole affair. It is compostable so breaks down along with the food waste.
This is their vision:
Obeo / Vimeo
The bag/box will be stocked in Dunnes Stores (€3.75 for a pack of five) after the women worked on it for 18 months with the support of Enterprise Ireland, NCAD and NovaUCD.
One of the co-founders, Elizabeth Fingleton, said that they believed the 12-million-household-strong brown bin customer base in the UK will also be interested in their solution. “We plan to expand into the UK by the end of the year and we are currently in talks with a UK-based multiple,” she said.
Kate Cronin, 30, from Dublin, is a product designer, while Fingleton, 29, from Laois, is a chartered accountant and business graduate. Their product was part of the 2013 UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Programme which helps UCD and NCAD researchers gain skills to help them lead the launch of a new venture. You can find out more about that programme here.
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Terrifying but sadly all too predictable as temperatures rise. You’d hope this would wake a few of the deniers up as it’s more local than some of the countries people chauvinistically dismiss. But alas these people would still be posting their copy and paste, Trump n dumpster science support, while the fire or flood is on their doorstep.
@SerotoninWars: you do realize they’ve had wildfires all over the globe for centuries?
@Niall English: You do realise that they have been far worse in recent years on account of climate change?
@Niall English: You do realise that ever more parched woodlands catch fire ever more easily, which spreads ever more quickly?
@JOHN O CONNELL: You mean when there were only a few millions of people?
And vast areas of the planet were covered in forests?
Imagine that!
@JOHN O CONNELL: Those fires were caused by a collision with fragments of a comet. What is your point?
@JOHN O CONNELL: Younger Dryas
It must have all grown back, from being burnt the last few years
@P. V. Aglue: You think houses and factories grow back?
What did the Greeks ever do for us?
@Padraig O’Brien: The birthplace of western thinking.
@Padraig O’Brien: Plato, Aristotle Euclid’s geometry aid the foundations for European rationality and scientific inquiry, and influenced the development of European science and mathematics. The epics of Homer and the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles deeply influenced European literature; their Greek humanism, that emphasized individual dignity, profoundly affected the development of European and American literary traditions. The music of Ancient Greece, particularly the theoretical frameworks of harmonics developed by the likes of Pythagoras, laid the foundations of Western music theory. And the political ideas of Ancient Greece, particularly the concept of democracy as practised in Athens, have had a lasting impact on European politics and systems of government.
@David Jordan: I frequently reread an old school text book on ancient Greek history by Bury.
(Am reading it again at the moment.)
Fascinating.
@David Jordan: “The music of Ancient Greece, particularly the theoretical frameworks of harmonics developed by the likes of Pythagoras, laid the foundations of Western music theory”.
And then (c)rap came along and that all went out the window.
Here in Bulgaria the fires started in June and keep going. There is several at any given time, and once a fire is put down, another one starts in a different place. There are constant appeals for volunteers to help the fire service, who are exhausted. Turkey sent fire trucks to help, and the Chesch republic sent two planes. What seems to be missing is coordinated EU level approach to this – Southern Europe is burning, and will continue burning every summer. Did someone ask Ursula what the plan is?
@ Thesaltyurchin and David Jordan
Are ye too young to have seen Monty Python?
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