The Mission Towards Less Food Waste with Ellie Porter of @orcadigesters

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and author of the Conscious Design book. And today I'm excited to be talking to Ellie. She works in business development with Orca, with their goal being to reduce and help manage the food waste that is generated by, well, almost every food business on the planet. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so I love, love what you guys are doing. Always like to start with the origin story, at least a little bit. So would love to have you jump back in time a bit and share how did, how did Orca come about?

Yeah, for sure. Orca honestly has a really cool origin So I'm always happy to talk about it. So essentially Orca was founded by Louie Agnostakos, who ran the first private recycling company in Ontario. And during then, kind of how that whole situation came to be, Louie and his partner Ted began the journey by literally driving around the city, all over the city in their mom's car, picking up recyclables off the street. And that's how they started kind of collecting and really getting into the whole idea of recycling and the circular economy. But But he's always really believed in the importance of treating everyone with the utmost respect. And that kind of first really paid off when they scored their very first large contract with, at the time, what was called Maple Leaf Gardens. Essentially what happened there was the janitorial staff had Louie's business card on hand. They pretty much laughed him out of the office when he first approached them to kind of get this contract. But one day they had this very, very big problem. It was a Friday night. The stadium hosted this really, really huge event and they were in turnaround mode for the Toronto Maple Leafs, one of their most important charity events that was happening early the next morning. Now the problem was the stadium had closed all the concession stands, so they hadn't scheduled a cleanup crew for the next day. But the problem was they didn't anticipate that the entire stadium was going to bring food with them. So the event was a complete disaster. The stadium was really in, in pretty much disarray for the next day and they had no one there to clean it up. And so the janitorial staff had Louis' card on hand. They called him up and said, we need your help. And he said, no problem, I'll be right there. The problem was, at the time, his partner was on a date with his now wife. And so he put her on a bus, they grabbed the van, and they essentially cleaned up day and night that entire stadium— sweeped, cleaned, mopped, took all of the garbage away. And that's how they founded their first recycling company, Turtle Island Recycling. So with kind of some more challenges along the way, that's where his passion for Waste management essentially, and recycling really took off. And then after that, Louis essentially found this digester technology. It was really in its infancy stages. And as his recycling company began to grow, he realized when he was driving into work and he stood there and watched every single diesel truck start up in the beginning of the day, more and more trucks started to come, more and more emissions. You could physically see them kind of come up. He was like, this can't be how we're moving forward. This can't be how we're actually trying to become more sustainable. Seeing the emissions come out when all of my trucks start up every single morning. And so that's when we kind of founded this, this new infancy technology at the time, an aerobic digester, brought that up to Toronto, and then that's kind of how Orca got started. We needed to find a way to manage food waste on site so that the emissions from the physical transport of the waste were no longer there, and that's pretty much how we got started.

I love it. That is a great story, uh, starting in your mom's car. That's—

That's right.

Whatever works, man. Oh, that's awesome. Well, so now, now you have this technology, you have this digestive technology that allows more on-site processing of this food waste. How How does that work? Is it, for those that, you know, are familiar with the product, this is a device you can install. How does that, how does that work as a, you know, from a business standpoint, if I'm like, I have a bunch of food waste and I want, I don't want to truck it somewhere, how, how do I do that?

Yeah, exactly. So essentially the way we talk about Orca, it makes the most sense if you think about it just like a giant stomach. So ORCA is an aerobic digester. Now essentially that means we just use 2 things. We use oxygen and we use microorganisms to break down the food waste. So very similar to our own stomach and every other living thing, as you're using those microorganisms to break down food waste, for us, our byproduct is a solid, but for these microorganism strains, their byproduct is actually a liquid. And so that's how we're able to actually digest all of that food waste. Now inside the unit, again, all that food waste is going to be digested 100% into a liquid effluent. Now, the cool thing about this is that liquid effluent then just goes straight down the drain, so everybody in the kitchen never has to take out the garbage again. We're never kind of putting anything in garbage bags. We're never hauling those bins or bags either down multiple floors for, you know, a very large hotel or convention space area, but then we're also not having those trucks come to pick up that food waste. We're not putting food waste at a transfer station where kind of more movement and physical movement is And then of course, all of that nutrient potential is not ending up in the landfill, so we're not actually creating any of those emissions that typically happen with, with the breakdown of food waste if we were treating it in that way. So it's pretty cool. Essentially, Orca almost looks like a dishwasher. It's just a big stainless steel appliance that sits right inside the kitchen, and if you were to use it, it's almost acting like a bottomless garbage bin. So if you were walking past the Orca in your kitchen, you would throw in the apple core that you just ate, and never have to touch it again. Or with our largest model, for example, you can walk by and feed 100 to 200 pounds in one feeding. And that's kind of how the unit is slowly digesting all into that liquid and it's going right down the drain.

Got it. Is there any benefit? Because there's a lot of different composters out there and things like that. You can buy even like kitchen top little ones for personal use. And sometimes they have what gets generated is used as like fertilizer or nutrients for growing things. Is that something you guys are thinking about or as a potential, or is it just, you know, at this commercial level it's just too much and it's, it is, I mean, it's, it's safe to put down the drain, so easier to do that kind of, what does that, or how does that work?

Is that a totally different digestive, you know, Yeah, no, it's a great question and there's a couple different answers to it. So the first one is, yeah, in typical composting, the reason why, you know, it's better for the environment or better for human health is because we're returning the nutrients, the water content, everything that was actually used to grow that food, we're returning it back to the soil, therefore kind of creating this circular model of food and agriculture. And so that's why, you know, traditional composting is considered to be better for composting the environment. is a really, really good thing. We want to make sure that we're returning nutrients to the soil. We want to make sure that we're growing different crops and crop cycling on the farm, all that kind of stuff. Now the idea behind that, of course, works very, very well if you have a space to, to do that. But for example, for a very, very large kind of industry, when you're going through 100, 200 pounds of food waste every single hour for 12, 13, 14 hours of the day, To break down that food waste into a soil, first of all, our units will do that in an hour. And to break it down into a soil would take a couple weeks to possibly months. So firstly, we need somewhere to physically store that waste, which is very tricky, and especially in a city or even far out, there's always not really that infrastructure in place for that side of things.

Right.

But then secondly, the other cool piece about Orca, because we're actually digesting into a liquid, fluid, and then we're in most cases tapping into the existing kind of sanitary sewer infrastructure or wastewater infrastructure. Once that gray water essentially— so same as the sinks and the dishwashers and the toilets, everything that kind of drains from that building— once that commingles with the gray water coming from ORCA or the effluent coming from ORCA, that's going to get treated at the wastewater treatment facility. There they already have the infrastructure in place to treat very large volumes of very high nutrient, you know, protein, minerals, getting all of those like very dense kind of minerals and nutrients from our water. They have the ability to actually extract the energy potential from those. They have the ability to then recycle those back into the environment. It's a system that is currently operating. And so for Orca, what we're really trying to do is actually get the same or similar kind of outputs from composting, extracting those nutrients, putting them back in the ground, or using those nutrients to create energy or electricity. But what we're doing is doing it in a much more efficient, much more kind of mainstream way by getting them there through that liquid effluent rather than kind of a solid.

Right. Well, that makes perfect sense that the treatment plant is already set up to do all that work. So you're focusing on making it usable in that system rather than trying to do everything, everything On site, which would take way too much space to do.

Essentially, yeah, space, labor. Um, there's a couple— there's, there's a few things that we like to say at Orca, which we have this saying, and we always say we want to feed the orca. Um, but where that came from is we want to make sure that A, we're feeding the planet, B, we're also feeding people, and then we're making sure that we're feeding the orca. So any food that can be donated, we'd much rather feed people first if we have usable food. If we can feed the planet in any way, we'd rather do that first. And And then our third step, any food that cannot be donated or reused at all, we'd like that to be feeding the orca because that's how we're kind of more sustainably dealing with that food waste that's left. And that's kind of to, to get at that whole notion as well.

That's awesome. And are you guys, where all are you in the planet? Like, are you getting into markets? How many markets are you in? Where are you going? Are you mostly, I'd guess you mostly restaurant, but you had mentioned Like even hotel as well? Kind of where, where is, where is Orca getting used?

Yeah, so we started here in Toronto. We actually manufacture everything here in Toronto, Canada. We're now in about 17 countries across the globe, I believe. We're on almost every continent, maybe, maybe one day. But yeah, pretty much the type of industries that we're working with is anybody that really creates a large amount of food waste. So we do have about 5 model sizes. They're all named OG with a number, and that's corresponding to how many pounds per hour we recycle. So our small unit looks a little bit like a dishwasher. It's called an OG15. That will recycle 15 pounds an hour, and that size is usually used in restaurants. So typically, you know, sized restaurants. But all the way up the scale, when we get to our largest unit, which is an OG100, that's going to recycle 100 pounds an hour. So businesses that are using those, casinos, convention centers, stadiums as well, a lot of hotels that do a lot of banquet or event spaces. We have a couple golf courses, any kind of university. Healthcare has been a really big one as well. Any kind of retirement community, anybody that's really generating a large amount of food waste and needs kind of a sustainable way to process it. Another one that we don't touch on very often, but we do have a specific model that was designed for the cruise industry because obviously when you're on— I love that. I would assume you need a very, very good way, yeah, to deal with waste. You have to bring in all the food first of all, but then you need a way to actually process it and deal with it when you're kind of out on the open waters. And they do create a fair amount of waste as well. So that's kind of a side industry that's not thought about all the time, but certainly important.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on Conscious Design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Yeah, well, I think people kind of forgot about that during COVID and now, now it's back. It's, it's very back now. So it's great. That you have that. I'm curious, 'cause there's also, you know, the industrial scale of like, we're making 1 billion crackers at a facility and there's, there's definitely food waste. Are you, I imagine they probably have more than 100 pounds an hour. Is that, is that like a larger scale or is that, have you, have you started looking at that size? I don't even know how big you'd have to make it to do that.

Yeah, certainly. And there is quite a large amount of waste from any kind of a manufacturing kind of standpoint or just food production on a very large scale in general. There's a couple different technologies that are available for those areas. Now for Orca specifically, like I said at the beginning, we work like a stomach. And so just like us, we work well on a balanced diet, meaning we'll take vegetables, we'll take meat, we'll take cooked rice, raw bread, anything like that. But for a lot of those kind of food production facilities, if they're really only focusing on one type of food waste, typically there's a better-suited kind of composting program or something similar that they can use. But for any production facilities, for example, there's a couple that kind of produce the food that you take on airplanes, stuff like that.

Right.

They're creating, you know, a decent amount of waste with a lot of different components. So something like that is a really, really good opportunity for, for Orca to, to be used in their main kind of prep facility.

Got it. So one of the things that makes you guys unique is being able to digest everything and not be this super specific, it only, it only recycles crackers. You can, you can throw anything, any food item into it and it'll, it'll just do its job.

Correct, yeah. A big one that people don't know about is bones. So aerobic digestion, we will break down that bone into a liquid and that will go down the drain. It's pretty cool because a lot of other technologies will typically kind of reduce the size of waste that you need to deal with. If they're spinning or garberating or dehydrating or any of those, you still do have a little bit of that solid waste left over.

Right.

But for ORCA, everything including meat bones will become that liquid. and go down the drain. So we never really have to kind of clean out or deal with a, a solid byproduct at all. Hmm.

I wonder if it'd be really good in like the fishing industry, something like that where you have a bunch of, you know, guts and bones and that's hard to, hard to digest in some, some way with most things. That was cool. That was very cool.

That's true.

Awesome.

True. Yeah.

Why, You guys have grown quite a bit and you guys have some, quite a few options and sizes. Is there any— released this one for cruise ships, a marine application, which is awesome. Is there any goal? Is it, are you seeing that like the 100, is that enough? Or are you guys thinking, oh, we need to make something bigger? Or is there some other areas you're like, we're we're trying to tackle or have interest, you know, people just reaching out going, hey, can you make one for this?

Absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of innovation kind of coming out in the space. It's still a little bit small in North America. Aerobic digestion really only came about probably— we've been around for about 12 years, so only really just before that has it been around in North America. That's a really nice timeline. It's a pretty new area, I guess, so there's just been a ton of growth in recent years. The thing that we're really focusing on, and there is a couple different aspects for sure, one of them that I think will come in the future, so the actual strain of microorganism that's being used, there are of course a bunch of different ways to modify different kind of microorganisms to be able to more effectively digest different strains of food waste or different types of food waste.

Yeah.

So that's a little bit of a future-speaking thing, but That could matter a lot if we can get, you know, a specific microorganism strain to digest more specifically what the food waste is. It's going to more rapidly make sure that we're getting through that food waste in a more sustainable and efficient manner. So there's that side of things. These are the things that we're really focusing on this year is we're redeveloping our software platform. So ORCA currently, every ORCA unit is sitting on scales. So every time that someone feeds the Orca or approaches the unit, it's going to know where that was, what food waste was fed to the unit, how much was fed, potentially who fed it. For example, in grocery stores, they can see, you know, if bakery was feeding the unit versus produce, or how much was coming from the meat department, those types of things. Which has been super important for, you know, any business if they're running multiple units, for example, all over the globe even, or all over North America, or just through different We're able to see exactly what food waste is coming out of each unit. But not only that, now we're starting to actually understand what food waste is being generated. So something that's super, super important for restaurants, if we know that there's a large amount of waste coming from one menu item, is there something that we can do with some of that waste, typically waste food or trimmings or offcuts, that we could create another menu item with?

Mm-hmm.

And that's pretty exciting because all that technology is in the same Kind of container, I suppose, of where you're actually disposing of the waste as well. So it's not adding extra steps for labor. You're now getting all that information automatically as soon as you're kind of throwing something away or feeding the Orca.

I love that. That would be very interesting to know as a business and in general, right? I mean, you would even be able to know regionally, like, oh, in the Northwest region, it's We throw away this most of the time. That would be very, very interesting to see what comes of that.

That's exactly it. Yeah. And I mean, waste globally changes a lot. The whole waste management industry is very, very— it's very different depending on region, but even city to city, it varies quite a bit in terms of how we're managing waste, how we've decided to deal with it. You probably know this if you've even traveled from city to city and you've seen that their recycling bins accept different materials than maybe yours do at home.

Oh yes.

That's a very, very— yeah, that's a very small area of distance that you travel, but it's completely different just depending on where you are. And so for a large kind of, let's say, hotel chain, for example, you know, you have hotels all over the world. Every single hotel has a different waste management structure, which can be super difficult because how can you standardize kind of that process? And so for Orca, If one of their hotel brands is in Dubai and one of them is in Australia and one of them is in, you know, Western Canada, you're actually able to install the Orca same as you would just install the same brand of dishwasher in each of those kitchens. You're now able to just install the Orca right beside it, and your procedure for actually dealing with food waste is going to be exactly the same no matter what food waste they're producing in each of those kitchens. The disposal and the reporting and the metrics that are coming from the unit are going to be reported exactly the same. So that's, that's the pretty exciting thing that, that is kind of coming from.

Yeah, I would imagine for, you know, someplace like Hilton or any of these other huge, huge hotel chains that have one in almost every country, it seems like would be very useful to simplify something. That would be so different. I hadn't thought about, but it is like we've, I've moved all over the West Coast in the US and now I'm living in Phoenix and it's very, every city has its own unique version of what recycling is. And that's just, you know, the consumer facing. That's not, that's not getting into like—

Right.

The city's laws about your food, how you handle food waste, because that's a whole other, other thing. You get into that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the other thing that's, that's, you know, coming up in an exciting way too is a lot of states especially, but of course in many other countries as well, coming out with different bylaws about needing to separate organic waste. We know that organic waste creates in the States actually almost 40% of all of our waste stream. And so being able to separate that from the landfill is going to make, you know, Huge, huge impacts. And so, for example, California has quite a few laws that are coming in place now to make separating organic waste mandatory, which is exciting, but definitely something that's coming more and more in the future.

Yes, yes, it'll make an impact, but it'll be a little painful for a little bit.

Little transition.

Yes, always an adjustment period for sure. Awesome. Well, This is, this is very exciting. It's great that you guys have this technology and it's, yeah, it's not talked about very much in terms of, of how you actually digest and, and, and process it. It's unique. So hopefully, hopefully it grows. It seems like it's growing in popularity.

Yeah.

It does its, it does, it works. So hopefully it keeps growing. Before we, before we wrap up though, I wanted to make sure to give you a chance If there's anything else you wanted to share. I know you're working on a lot of really cool things, uh, would— and share like where people can find you, best way to contact. I know you were just speaking at an event, so if anybody wants to have you speak at an event, uh, what's the best way to find you guys and anything else you wanna share?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think it's really important when we talk about just sustainability and environmental initiatives and we're talking about the circular economy and different things that we can do, sometimes it can be Oh, sure. Which I know we all certainly understand. Yeah. And so I think it's really important if anybody is interested in learning more about these, just, just be a little bit more open-minded. Make sure that you're having conversations with people. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to watch documentaries, read movies, anything that you kind of need to do to, to more understand what's going on. Don't be afraid to ask questions. There's never a dumb question when you're talking about this kind of stuff. Recycling and waste management specifically, it's an industry that changes all the time. And so if you're interested in learning more, please keep asking questions, understand what's going on in the, in the global kind of sphere. It's, it's always an interesting kind of time and there's a bunch of new advancements in technology. So yeah, definitely keep open minds. The other thing I would definitely say is waste management is super interesting. And the reason why I love it and why I love speaking about it is because I kind of think about it as we're almost working like a trainer. In waste management, we're trying to work ourselves out of a job because if there was no waste, we wouldn't need a way to manage it. And so that's really the ultimate goal of what we're working towards. If we can work towards less food waste in any area, that's, that's really what we're trying to do. And so that's kind of what I'll, what I'll leave with. If you want to find me, of course you can find our website. We're at feedtheorca.com. You're welcome to email me right away. I think my information will be in— the description box, but it's eatborder@feedtheorca.com. And yeah, don't hesitate to reach out if you want to learn anything more about sustainability or food waste. We're always happy to chat.

Awesome. Well, this has been great chatting with you. I love what you're doing. It's great to learn more about kind of the backend and how it all works. Makes perfect sense.

And yeah, just like a stomach, we're returning everything to nature. So if you're think about it like that. That's it.

Yes, I love, I love it. And I love it. Feed the orca. I like that. That's a great, great way to have that there. And yeah, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you just got back from your trip to speak. So thanks for jumping on and chatting.

Absolutely. Well, thanks, Ian. Appreciate it.