Steel says Eco Guardians was established over a decade ago to develop solutions to tackle waste.
At the heart of the company’s strategy is a mission to reduce food going to landfill, which in developed nations is estimated to be about 40 per cent of all that is produced.
The SoilFood system can process green waste, food waste, animal byproducts and compostable packaging. It also generates condensed water that can be harvested and reused as grey water.
This process takes as little as nine hours, and Eco Guardians says the resulting SoilFood fertiliser can improve the quality of soil by supplying nutrients essential for healthy plant grown, while reducing the need for synthetic fertilisers. In addition to cutting methane emissions associated with the breakdown of organic material in landfill, carbon is sequestered back to soil.
Working with soil scientists, the company says it has been able to demonstrate its ability to improve soil health and promote safe, vigorous plant growth by improving the soil biology.
With growing concerns over the global supply of fertiliser, Steel says a longer term objective for Eco Guardians is to distribute fertiliser at scale to both boost soil quality and create a more circular system for food producers.
While some industrial and residential food waste is being diverted to food digesters to make biogas, redeploying it to make fertiliser has the added benefit of solving the pressing issue of soil quality, she adds.
To this end the company is now developing a facility to refine and distribute the SoilFood fertiliser on a larger scale, assisted by funding provided by Sustainability Victoria.
This, Steel says, will give Eco Guardians the capacity to accept feedstock from its customer base and then balance its nutrient profile to create a highly consistent organic fertiliser that will be commercially available to purchase.
“We’re targeting to have built the first plant by the fourth quarter of this year and then we can take the SoilFood fertiliser to market.”