2. Version 1.0: June 4, 2013
Presented by: Christopher Jankowski
Solution Group
Divergent Energy, LLC
Solution Offering A study of Organics Recycling in an Urban Environment
Project Name
Case Study for South Korean Government and proposed
applicability to US urban organics diversion and disposal solutions.
Sponsors Profile
Divergent Energy
Divergent Energy was established to help businesses find ways to divert their waste
streams, process organics and, in some cases, create revenue producing opportunities.
By reviewing the waste streams that business generates across industries, we identify
options that are more ecologically responsible and more importantly – economically
viable. Conducting waste audits allows a company to produce a more comprehensive
overview of the material that currently goes out the back door, into the dumpster and
ultimately the land fill. This process allows companies to significantly reduce their
current disposal fees as well as provide incremental revenue streams.
Divergent Energy, through it's consortium of associated environmental companies, has
the holistic ability to perform waste stream audits, arrange reductions in waste streams
through partner recycling companies, design and build everything from simple modular
organics recycling systems up to plant-size operations.
3. Divergent Energy and it's partners employ patented technology developed by some of
the foremost experts in solid waste diversion and processing in the world.
The products included in their engineered systems include Modular machines (66 lbs to
2 tons/day capacity), and Plant-Size systems (up to 100+ tons/day capacity), and an
Anaerobic Digestion solution for producing clean, renewable energy from organic waste.
These systems are designed to efficiently process a wide variety of materials, including
mixed food scraps, poultry bones, seafood shells, paper products and liquids without
causing jamming or downtime.
Headquartered in South Carolina, with northeast offices in New York, Divergent Energy
has the engineering, sales, installation and support in place to service the US and
Canada and is currently expanding it's services into Mexico.
The subject country and population
South Korea is a relatively small land mass, supporting a large urbanized population. It
occupies the southern half of the Korean Peninsula in eastern Asia. It is bordered by
North Korea to the north, the Sea of Japan / East Sea to the south and to the east, and
the Yellow Sea to the west. South Korea has an area of 98,480 square kilometers
(38,023 square miles), which makes it slightly larger than the state of Indiana. It has
238 kilometers (148 miles) of land borders with North Korea and 2,413 kilometers
(1,499 miles) of coastline. Among its major cities, Seoul, the capital city, and Inchon are
located in the northwestern part of the country, while Kwangju and Pusan are in the
south, Taegu is in the southeast, and Taejon is in the center.
The population of South Korea was estimated at 47,470,969 in July 2000. It increased
from 35.3 million in 1975 to 46.1 million in 1998, indicating a growth rate of 1.2 percent.
At the current estimated growth rate of 0.6 percent, the population will increase to 51.1
million by 2015. In 2000 the estimated birth rate was 15.12 per 1,000 population while
4. the estimated death rate was 5.85 per 1,000 population. The estimated migration rate
was 0 percent.
South Korea's population is ethnically homogeneous. With the exception of a small
Chinese community of about 20,000, the rest of the population are ethnic Koreans.
Some 78 percent of the population falls within the age groups of 15-64 (71 percent) and
65 or older (7 percent). By 2015, 10.6 percent of the population will be older than 65.
South Korea is a highly urbanized society. In 1998, about 84.5 percent of its population
lived in urban areas, a significant increase from 1975 when the urban population
accounted for 48 percent of the total. The urban population is estimated to reach 92.2
percent by 2015. Seoul, the capital city, is the largest urban area, with a population of
10.4 million, followed by Pusan (3.9 million), Taegu (2.5 million), Inchon (2.5 million),
Kwangju (1.3 million), and Taejon (1.3 million).
Subject Relevance to US Applications:
The dense urban populations, size of subject cities and regulatory attitudes are similar in
each country, albeit, South Korea is several years ahead of the US in implementing
mandatory organics diversion. To the author's knowledge there have been no studies of
individual behaviors testing voluntary compliance to divert organics through
introduction of an organics process and diversion monitoring machine. We feel that this
study emulates conditions and universal human behaviors that should indicate the
outcomes of implementation in the US.
Challenge:
South Korean cities, like large US cities, have vast problems regarding waste removal.
Some experts place organics recycling as the next front in the war on land filled waste.
The average person generates 4.5 pounds of trash every day – about 1.5 tons of solid
5. waste per year. Although the EPA estimates that 75 percent of solid waste is recyclable,
only about 30 percent is actually recycled.
Over 40% of all organic waste emanates from residential waste collection. Urban
environments are particularly challenged in diverting organics due to the high density,
lack of space to place dumpsters and problems associated with adding pick-up schedules
to already overburdened trash haulers traveling overly congested streets. Environmental
experts are also concerned with the excessive carbon burden associated with increased
truck traffic for additional dumpster pick-ups. Leaving dumpsters filled with
decomposing organic matter can cause problems with insects, rodents and certainly
doesn't enhance the quality of breezes blowing through the city.
Residents take food waste to the "food waste bin," dump the food waste into the bin
from the plastic bag, and the plastic bag must be put into a separate bin. This is one of
the major pain points for residents due to the mess and smell. The challenge, in essence,
is how to achieve On-Site Organics Collection and Processing to eliminate the problems
associated with waste hauler collection and off-site processing. To address this
challenge, we knew that we needed to install an on-site mass collection and processing
system, then convince residents to integrate new behaviors of separating and disposing
of organics through this new system.
The locations:
At the behest of the South Korean Government, we chose Seoul, South Korea for both
pilots. The pilots were conducted to test compliance and effectiveness in an introductory
program promoting organic waste diversion in an urban setting. Each location is a large
multi-family high rise apartment building, one with 131 assigned participants, the other
with 191 assigned participants.
Proposed Solution:
Organic waste has a short “shelf-life”, i.e. it begins a putrefaction process immediately
without refrigeration, thus requires immediate processing to avoid noxious odors,
attraction of insects, rodents. With space constraints for establishing a processing
6. facility, we enhanced an organic waste dehydrator machine and placed it in a small area
adjacent to the apartment complex. The DEcycle-150 has the ability to reduce organic
waste up to 90% weight and volume by taking the water out through a sanitary heating
and dehydrating process. The remaining bio-product is nutrient rich, sterile and suitable
as a soil amendment or other environmentally valuable commodity. The by-product can
then be aggregated into a portable container and picked up by light truck and
transported to a recycling facility.
South Korea's system calls for residents to be eventually charged by weight for using the
system. We modified the equipment with RFID technology so that a resident can scan
their ID card then place their bagged organics on a scale prior to processing. RFID is
ideal when the system is shared by multiple parties (e.g. tenants at an apartment
complex) as the machine can track how much food waste each party processes for cost
sharing and other purposes. This “digital log” increases awareness by providing
quantitative data rather than allowing the user to forget about the amount of waste
generated after it has been tossed in the dumpster. Reports on weights and volume
measures can be immediately sent to apartment owners, government entities etc by
wireless transmittal. Residents will be billed monthly for their deposits into the system.
Changing user behavior by quantifying and displaying exactly how much food waste the
user generates each day, week, month, year, etc.
Providing calculation for fair sharing of cost.
Tracking waste reduction (or increase) over time.
Processing food waste on-site into reusable biomass so no organic material goes
to the landfill.
7. Results:
As you can see in the attached reports, the residents at both pilots liked the fact that they
did not need to dump the food waste out of the plastic bag into a separate bin. All that is
required is to but in the food waste in a plastic bag provided by the city and put the
plastic bag filled with food waste into the DEcycle-150.
A resident of the apartment who was interviewed states that she likes the fact that the
experience of throwing away food waste is much cleaner and she does not need to be
exposed to bad odor.
In the news clip, they also talk about the fact that the residents of the apartment
decreased food waste by 30% due to the data analysis being provided back to the
residents - we think this behavior change is very powerful.
"We installed one DEcycle-150 at one apartment in Seoul from mid-July last year
and still operating until today. For the first 6 months, people disposed food waste
as they want but they have not been charged, however, everybody knows how
much of food waste have been disposed and at what price thru the screen in the
machine. Apartment management announced that from the 1st January 2013,
everybody will be charged on how much they disposed as shown in the machine's
display, which they can see every time they disposed, and for the last 2 months,
they have reduced disposal of food waste by 23 % by weight."
9. The output from our machines can be used in various ways, including renewable energy
(as pelletized fuel, note that this has been implemented in France), livestock feed, and
organic fertilizer.
Benefits and Future plans for this solution in South Korea:
Municipal governments in South Korea believe that this solution is extremely viable in
their cities. Waste Hauling contract amounts have been reduced, commensurate to the
decrease in organic weights and volumes being picked up.
The following details were provided us:
Governments will implement and receive compliance data and will establish direct
billing to consumers for organics.
Resulting decreases in trash bills will be reflected in decreased resident trash bills.
12 units in place now in various cities.
50 additional units will be ordered soon.
Large scale (hundreds of units) adaption is predicted in near future.
This study's applicability to a US solution:
We think there are strong parallels between the challenges faced by the South Koreans
and those faced by North American Cities. Shrinking landfills, increased costs and the
real need for responsible waste diversion and recycling create the need for new
solutions. All cities face traffic issues and space constraints, limiting the ability to
separate, collect and pick-up and transfer organic waste to aggregation sites. Some US
cities, like NY, have to send their waste five hours by truck or on barges to transfer
stations, on its way to an out-of-state destination. The environmental cost of adding
additional scheduled pick-ups, new containers, new routes, new destinations to waste
haulers is astronomical. The cost to taxpayers and the environment is unsustainable.
10. The only sensible solution is to process the waste on-site, reducing its weight and
volume up to 90% and having light trucks pick up the inert, odorless processed
byproduct as necessary. Picking up already processed waste is cleaner, more efficient
and safer for the environment.
South Korean participants readily complied with the behavioral change required to drop
their organic waste into the machine, possibly because environmental consciousness is a
bit more advanced there due to initiatives to curb landfilled waste begun years ahead of
the US. Despite the head start, we believe that US residential generators could be
enticed to change their behaviors by incentivizing them in some way. Divergent Energy
will be working with corporate sponsors, NGOs and local governments to devise
partnerships and ideas designed to expose this solution in major cities and gain large
scale adoption and compliance by residents.
Some ideas currently being explored:
R&D grant through NY State DED Environmental Investment Program.
Exposure and promotion with Environmental, Recycling, Non-Profit Groups.
Creation of behavioral change programs to encourage diversion.
Presentation to major US cities governments and large multi-family owners.
Corporate Sponsorship/Partnership of the Solution.
Licensing the technology and systems to other countries.
11. Conclusion:
There is no other potential solution to the urban organic waste problem that
incorporates a sensible on-site process with simple modifications of waste generator
behavior. We believe that with the integration of appropriate sponsorships,
incorporating strategic partnerships between residents, recyclers, corporate sponsors
and governments we will be able to divert millions of tons of formerly landfilled waste in
high density urban areas. We further believe that the light carbon footprint for this
diversion plan, as well as the beneficial recovery of nutrient-filled processed organic
byproduct will prove to be a very attractive alternative to the current outdated models
being considered.
Next Steps:
We will be presenting this solution to interested parties at an accelerated rate and
seeking feedback towards implementation of a US Pilot by mid-2013. We are seeking
additional cost benefit and economic modeling to show what we hypothesize as the
extreme economic, environmental and practical advantages of this on-site system
versus the current hauling model in the US.
12. Appendix
Pilot at Bang-Bae District in Seoul
• DEcycle-150 Pilot period: 30 days
• Demo Machine: GS-100 (220lbs/day)
• Demo machine assigned to be used by 131 apartment units
• On average residents from 45 units used the demo machine each day
• Demo Machine Operating Hours:
o Loading mode from 6AM – 9PM
o Dehydration mode after 9PM
o
Survey Results
Description Good Good Bad Very Bad
Noise Level 37% 53% 7% 3%
Odor Level 40% 50% 7% 3%
Satisfaction 50% 42% 3% 5%
Other comments made by pilot apartment residents:
• Very convenient to throw away food waste in plastic bag
• Requirement to use RFID card is a hassle
• We now use codes rather than RFID cards
13. Pilot at Ban-Po District in Seoul
• DEcycle-150 Pilot period: 30 days
• Demo Machine: DE-100 (220lbs/day)
• Demo machine assigned to be used by 191 apartment units
• On average residents from 50 units used the demo machine each day
• Demo Machine Operating Hours:
o Loading mode from 7AM – 9PM
o Dehydration mode after 9PM
Survey Results
Description Good Good Bad Very Bad
Noise Level 30% 54% 13% 3%
Odor Level 32% 54% 8% 6%
Satisfaction 37% 52% 8% 3%
Other comments made by pilot apartment residents:
• Very convenient to throw away food waste in plastic bag
• Touch screen latency issue (this has been resolved on all of our DEcycle-150s)
Smart & Transmitted
The moment disposers put their food waste bags on the scale of DEcycle-150 (using the
same ID cards to access their home or pin codes), the machine weighs and measures the
corresponding fee of food waste and all data is saved & transmitted via the internet to
control department. In case of malfunction, DEcycle-150 detects errors and works
remotely by control system.
14. (at Condominium "HeightsApt" of Seoul, 170 households)
Year 2012(No charges)
Total
2012 July* August September October November December 2013 January February
Total food waste/month 2,949 kg 2,745 kg 2,467 kg 2,610 kg 2,646 kg 2,557 kg 1,950 kg 1,908 kg 19,832 kg
Days/month 16 days 31 days 30 days 31 days 30 days 31 days 31 days 28 days 228 days
Average food waste/day 184 kg 89 kg 82 kg 84 kg 88 kg 82 kg 63 kg 68 kg 87 kg
* Normalized for 1 month
Food waste has been reduced by 23% after "charge per weight" fee structure was implemented
2013(Charge per weight)
Month
Weight
2012 July* August September October November December 2013 January February
0 kg
500 kg
1,000 kg
1,500 kg
2,000 kg
2,500 kg
3,000 kg
Total food waste/month
15. The DEcycle-150
(1OOkg/day)
Food waste loading door
• Use black plastic bag
• Scale system for measuring exactly
correct weight
• Camera attached
Computer
• ID & P/W Enter
• Disposing weight confirmed
• Disposing Data being sowed
and transmitted through RFID
device
• Remote control via Internet
Automatic discharging door
Recycling dried material as animal feed/fertilizer/fuel
Loading materials Result
16. DEcycle-150:
• Recycles food waste at the point of waste created (wherever it is installed)
• No need to transport waste bins by hauling trucks to landfill sites
• Detects disposer’s ID and weight of each black plastic bag of food waste.
• Charges each disposer's waste by weight with debit or credit card or sends data to
government via internet
• Dries without creating bad odor and noise at any site
Operation Procedure
• Put food waste in black plastic bag, and tie up the plastic bag
• Tag your RFID card on RFID Reader, then confirm your information (or enter your
ID and password on the touch panel)
• RFID weighs and charges corresponding fee for the weight
• DEcycle-150 inserts the food waste automatically into the dryer
• Drying and deodorizing process will start and stop automatically
17. Contact For Further Information:
Christopher C. Jankowski
Vice President
Divergent Energy, LLC
315.299.3350 direct
315.308.1280 voice
315.374.7573 cell
cjankowski@divergent-energy.com
Jim Gosnell
President
Divergent Energy, LLC
864.612.8710
jgosnell@divergent-energy.com
