Compost bin that requires a subscription. You send the compost via mail to a processing facility https://www.fastcompany.com/90834481/nests-co-founder-design...
Figure that actual physical expenses cost $18/mo, leaving $15/mo profit per household; on top of that, they'll have extensive marketing costs - let's say marketing & employee costs take another $10/mo, leaving $5/mo profit per household. That means they'd need 1.6 million households to subscribe for a year just to get their investors their money back, or about 1% of the potential market.
How did they possibly win over investors? If I could short this I would.
Low interest rates have shifted massive amounts of capital to vc. We’re talking trillions possibly, including sovereign funds and ultrabillionaire family offices.
Are those wealth and investment managers nuts? Maybe, but I’ve concluded the most likely explanation is that they know exactly how to play the vc game: place a number of wild bets and hope that one in a hundred pays off. They sometimes seem to barely do due diligence, perhaps for efficiency and speed in allocation, and because the vc portion of their otherwise well-diversified portfolio is tiny. You and I get to partake in the schadenfreude if these stupid ventures collapse but they’re wiping their tears with the returns they make on other asset classes - stocks back then, fixed income now, etc.
If interest rates go back to the “old normal” for a sustained period of time then maybe this ends, but maybe the new normal is here to stay. We’ve been told there’d be a big cleanse of stupid or otherwise unprofitable ideas (can we really cram more SaaS solutions into every single niche under the sun?) but I’m seeing very little of the sort, other than layoffs and downsizings which are not thus far commensurate with the fireworks we were promised.
But isn't a key point of this theory of investing that you invest in many companies that have a 1% chance of making a 100x return - rather than investing in companies with a 0% chance?
> Mill has partnered with two processing facilities that purchase and turn all this dried food into a chicken feed ingredient, filtering out any errant forks or inorganic materials that accidentally get tossed in the bin.
The bit about filtering out inorganic material seems a little too convenient to gloss over though.
As a grown up, seeing all the stuff people put into food waste I can understand it.
What I still can't understand though is how many people mistake food wrapping for food..!
It isn't mistaking, it is not prioritizing the cognitive load for the separation effort. When I was in Japan, I was impressed with the level of fastidious compliance I witnessed in materials separation. That convinced me the talk in the US about how mainstream households could not possibly support a comprehensive cradle-to-cradle materials handling infrastructure are really talking about culture and/or necessity and not logistics.
Diversity is neither bad nor good - it just has benefits and costs.
You witnessed one of the costs.
On the other hand, we invented jazz and snowboarding. Those are examples of benefits.
I prefer the diversity.
I am a compost consumer and I have no desire to plasticize my pastures and fields the same way we’ve filled the oceans with plastic.
You can see this for yourself: just go to Home Depot and buy a bag of dirt … it’s not even micro plastics … whole objects like ballpoint pens and so on.
What happens to the trash can if I stop paying the subscription fee?
(Fast forward a few years, and someone will rewrite the above as a postmortem.)
Main positive is as you mentioned, food waste smell is gone, and no rodents/animals in the trash either inside or outside.
Austin turn all that stuff into compost, and then give it away to the community (just turn up with bags) and I assume use on city run parks and so on.
Matt Rogers cofounded Nest. People will throw money at that without asking any questions. Winners often win twice.
Plus the hardware grinder/dehydrator could be used in either your own garden or picked up weekly/monthly and sold locally.
Plus it's Green and it actually makes sense to try and capture that waste. Something individuals can do to make a difference.
I agree $33/mo and a mail-back service is never going to get their $100M back.
In Europe many countries have specific trash bins for food waste, they're collected by the city and reused for compost and biogas. No subscriptions, no investors, no soon to be e-waste wifi and bluetooth connected trash can, no shipping dirt in box
Especially in an urban setting if you don't have a compost bin in your building : it's not as ubiquitous as you seem to think.
Sorry for the cynicism, this was the case a few years ago, maybe not anymore?
I'm not sure what happens with the plastic in SE Asia, but we still send most of our plastic there.
https://de.statista.com/infografik/25368/wichtigste-abnehmer...
This statistic is listing the share of exported plastics that are exported to certain countries. But that's not "most of our plastic", because overall exports are around ~10%. So "most of our plastic" is either recycled or burned within Germany. (Not saying any of this is ideal, but it's not helping to spread false information.)
I meant something like: “The majority of plastic we export to other countries is still being exported to SE Asia”.
I think it happened that due to waste reduction, "normal" garbage is sometimes not enough to keep the furnaces running, so they take recyclable material from the yellow bags and burn it, to keep the temperatures stable...
The first is what happens with your regular garbage, the second is what happens (with some fraction) of the "recycled" yellow bag plastic.
I was not trying to say anything particular, just how "recycling" has become a form of gaslighting to avoid the tough question of how to produce less garbage in the first place.
That's really clever since it avoids needing to have separate trucks.
Will they also accept leaves and yard trimmings? These are much larger in volume, so I'm not sure if they could be handled, but maybe with large bags it's fine.
> sell to local farms/etc
My city sells to farms and also sells it in bags at retail stores. It's meets standards that are supposed to make it safe to use in your backyard garden.
Also, since it costs money to put stuff in a landfill, and since this diverts from the landfill, it saves a bit of money that way too.
(Further info: https://www.austintexas.gov/department/dillo-dirt)
I think I mostly need to rebuild with better structural design, better access for me and so on. A lot of the AI applications are taken care of here by 25Kg of motivated canine intelligence.
I pay $0/m, I chuck my food scraps in the garbage.
OR
I pay $33/m, I fart around with some device in my kitchen, then send them by post to some company and get nothing in return.
And from an environment point of view, it is a device that needs high energy to produce.
I actually compost. It cost say $33 one off for the bin, which sits on soil, and can take probably couple years worth of waste. I am not in an appartment, but surely the solution there is a compost on common outdoor or rooftop area, where the cost is lower because it can be shared.
I think you also pay for the electricity the device uses, and for replacement filters. No idea what happens in case of issues (need of repair/replacement parts/etc.), i.e. if it is included in the subscription or if it malfunctions it is on you.
That being said, having a real compost in the garden is quite mind blowing. Every time I go there to throw the peels of vegetables and fruits I think - damn, almost full. Then, somehow, the worms keep eating it and the next time it's still at the same level. Nature is pretty smart after all.