Jeff Wee, the co-founder of WormingUp, said organic waste contains nutrients and should not be dumped in landfills as is the current practice.“So I decided to set up WormingUp in 2015 to recycle organic waste. The compost is then donated to farmers in the Padawan area.”He said the organic waste was collected from hotels and restaurants, which are their partners.
“We provided the hotels and restaurants with organic waste bins and also taught their staff how to segregate the waste.“We cannot leave it for a few days due to the stench that it emits,” he said, adding that once the waste arrives at the factory, it would go through secondary filtering, de-watering, shredding, as well as a fermentation process before the organic waste is fed to the worms.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, he said waste collection from hotels and restaurants had reduced drastically as people could not dine-in.“There is also a lot of wastage coming from farmers as they can only harvest the middle part of leafy vegetables. Armed with a 10-year plan, Wee shared that the group intends to change the way the food supply chain system worked by cutting out the middleman.