Building a garden for The Joburg International Flower Show

During this past week, I was involved with building a garden for The Johannesburg International Flower Show, a new event created to be South Africa's equivalent of the 'Chelsea Flower Show'. I teamed up with landscaper Danielle Day - The Garden Girl. We'd met last year through YOLO. I love her work and ours has been a great partnership.

Dan created our design for a kitchen courtyard garden - it is charming. What I love most about it is that you'll look at our garden and think, "This is awesome, I can do something like this in my courtyard / small garden space". And you can!

Dan had a clear plan for the week starting with the layout of the site on Monday and brick laying of the pathway and perimeter to installing our wall and washing line, the planting boxes, and then the planting and finishing touches.

What was really exciting is that we use my pre-production YOLO Concrete Mixer to mix the concrete to plant poles. The one challenge we'll have in the marketing of this unit is really around behaviour change. If you've mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow for 15 years, it will take a bit to change to using something that is neater, cleaner and more convenient purely because it is different.

Using the pre-production YOLO Concrete Mixer for stand building. We emptied a 40kg concrete premix bag into the YOLO and added water. The tap was downhill - about 15m from our stand. We rolled the YOLO up to where we needed it and poured the concrete into the holes for the poles. Job done.

Compost delivery - kindly sponsored for our show garden by Stanler Farms. This compost is so rich.

Paved walkway. We used bark chips in the gaps and for the rest of our flooring.

Composting plays a big role in any garden to improve soil quality and provide nutrients to plants. The theme of our garden is "From table to garden" because all of the organic materials that come out of your kitchen as a result of meal preparation can go straight into a YOLO Compost Tumbler to create compost that can go into your garden. Less trash going out of your home and more goodness going into your soil.

We've incorporated a medium-sized YOLO Compost Tumbler in our kitchen courtyard garden.  Organic material from your kitchen and home, like fruit and vegetable peeling, egg shells, egg trays, tea bags, and coffee grounds can go straight into your YOLO. And the compost, can go straight back into your garden.

Danielle has cleverly planned our four planting boxes with plants for Health & Immunity, Digestion, Skin and Mental Health. Take a look at the plants, see what you can identify. Which colour corresponds to each health theme? Elands Nursery kindly provided the strong and healthy plants that decorate our stand.

We've got garden judging on Monday afternoon and the show starts on Wednesday through to Sunday. It should be an interesting adventure this week.

Hand 'em down to reuse

I like hand-me-downs, items of clothing that are passed from one person to the other.

About two years ago we had a clothes swap here in Parys. A bunch of girls all got together with bags of clothing that they no longer wore / didn't fit / didn't like and we all got pieces that look great on us. It was a fun evening of dress-up. All of the garments that I chose, I wear regularly throughout the year.

I have often, over the years, given away garments that just didn't work for me. I remember a pair of jeans that I never settled into that I passed onto a friend. I thought they would be perfect for her. It turns out that they were. I had forgotten about them and a few months later I visited her and happened to remark on how great her jeans looked on her and where did she get them. "From you," was her reply. They didn't look that good on me!

Other items I have passed on to domestic helpers for themselves, family and children. It really does work just to pass clothing on if they are are doing nothing but hibernating in your cupboard.

With two children in my life, I value hand-me-downs even more because, at 11 and 13, these creatures grow like weeds. They have barely fitted into something when they're already out of it. And many items don't get a lot of wear before they're too small. A neighbour passed on some of her too small items more than 18-months ago for Kyla. Some of the dresses were perfect to a little big and a really cute pair of jeans and a denim skirt were too big but worth keeping for her to grow into. The jeans are now just right and on Friday I put up the hem so that she can now start to wear them.

The children know to put outgrown clothing on the 'Table of Everything' and I pass these on.

Hand-me-down applies not only to clothing, but also to shoes, furniture, appliances, linen, tools, crockery and even spectacles and frames (hand in at an optometrist). Anything that one person no longer uses and that can be used by another.

It was serendipity that I bumped into man from town at the local auction where I was looking for an old wooden ladder. I didn't find anything there but two days later he called to say that his friend was moving and she had an old wooden ladder that she couldn't take with her to her new, smaller home. I picked up the ladder from him a few days later and with a lick of paint it will serve my decorative purposes.

The road to Zero Waste is paved with 5 Rs - Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot (compost) - in this order. Hand-me-down clothing ticks the Reuse box.

Measuring our YOLO Compost Tumbler's social impact

Last week I submitted an application for Chivas Regal's 'The Venture' business awards. "We're looking for innovative start-ups that use business to solve global social or environmental challenges," their website stated.

"The Chivas Venture is a global search to find and support the most promising start-ups with the potential to succeed financially and make a positive impact on the lives of others. One social entrepreneur from each participating country will make it to the global final and have a chance to win a share of $1 million in funding."

It took me four hours to complete the application and in the process I wrote almost 3,000 words. One of the questions asked about the social impact of our product and asked for figures, if possible. As I had no idea how to measure the social impact of our compost tumblers, I turned to Google. A response in one of the dozen pieces I looked through suggested looking at my customers and assessing where they were before the intervention and what changed afterwards.

 Our YOLO Compost Tumbler solves a problem for our customers: what to do with their organic waste. Many people in apartments, townhouses, estates and retirement complexes cannot have compost heaps (due to space or rule restrictions). Those on properties with sufficient space deal with other issues like pests (rodents, snakes, monkeys, dogs), complexity of heap management and lack of interest that prevents them from composting their organic waste.

Before my customers bought their YOLO Compost Tumblers, their organic waste (kitchen and garden) went out on the street for collection by their municipality on trash day. These bags of organic waste would then end up at landfill sites where they rot anaerobically, under tons of garbage, to give off methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

 After my customers receive their YOLO Compost Tumbler, their organic waste goes into the tumbler - instead of the trash. The contents get regularly mixed and aerated, and around three months after emptying their first tub of kitchen cuttings into  the first shell, my customers are able to dig a shell of nutrient-rich compost into their gardens, gift to a friend or donate to a community gardening project. That they get nutrient-rich compost out is very much a positive byproduct of YOLO's problem-solving function.

As the YOLO Compost Tumbler has two shells, one will be active and the other maturing so after the first shell has been filled, the customer enters a cycle where every six to eight weeks they're emptying a shell of matured compost.

 How can we allocate numbers to this process?

 Consider 100 YOLO Compost Tumblers. Assuming that between our users of small, medium and large units, they may average one black bag of organic waste (kitchen & garden) per week during the year (more waste in summer, less in winter). For each customer, that equates to 52 black bags a year that would have been put on the street for municipal collection.

For 100 customers, this is 5,200 bags in a one-year period. Accounting for only 100 units, we can already see the social impact and potential for incredible growth with every YOLO Compost Tumbler that finds a happy home.

 This is also about more than the actual organic waste materials. This is about the 5,200 less garbage bags that have to be picked up by municipal workers. This is about the 5,200 less bags of waste that are dumped at landfill sites. This is also about the 5,200 black plastic bags will no longer be used once-off and discarded.

 In addition, every other form of waste recycling has a long chain of interactions that have to happen. Plastics, for example, can be separated at home and put out for informal recycling collectors to pick up or these can be dropped at a recycling bin or centre. At the recycling centre, plastics are further separated. They're compacted and transported to a facility that can turn the waste plastic into plastic pellets - or the like - that another company can purchase to manufacture products from the recycled material.

With a YOLO and your own organic waste, no further intervention is necessary. Neither collectors, transporters, nor manufacturers. Kitchen cuttings and garden material decompose inside the YOLO shell and a product results - mature compost. This can be dug directly into the garden to put valuable nutrients back into the soil for our vegetables, flowers and other plants to absorb.

This is the measurable social impact of our YOLO Compost Tumblers. And we're only just beginning.

An experience at Decorex

The past two weeks have been full and energising. I spent last week in Jo'burg for the Decorex show, a home and design expo held at Gallagher Convention Centre. My mom came along to help on the stand. I'm so glad that she did because we were non-stop busy with visitors. She has her own YOLO Compost Tumbler so she knows how it works and by the end of the week she was a composting demonstration pro.

Me and Liz in our expo outfits - complete with gardening wellies.

We were located in Hall 4 - Outdoor Lifestyle, which suited us perfectly.

Over the five days of the expo we spoke to hundreds of people and demonstrated how to use our compost tumblers. We had all three of our sizes on the stand - small (left), medium (top right) and large (bottom right). We pulled the large out of the oven on the Monday night, just in time to take it to the show for setup the next morning! We're still busy with R&D on this unit to finalise the amount of plastic needed, the frame and other bits. It will be ready in a few weeks.

A photo wall with photos of our YOLO Compost Tumblers sent to us from customers.

Expo days are long and tiring but the experience was totally worth it. We had some on-the-day sales and have had other post-expo. I think these will trickle in steadily over the next few months. Many people that we met were about to move or in the process of building new homes.

For us the big benefit of the expo was in meeting and talking to people. We were astounded by how many people are separating their trash, recycling and trying to reduce the waste that comes into and out of their homes. In dealing with organic waste, our YOLO Compost Tumbler is an excellent solution, especially where you just don't have space for a heap or if you're just looking for a way to compost kitchen waste - like in an apartment (no garden) or townhouse (tiny to no garden).

Many people that we met are composting - to some degree. They're trying wormeries, bokashi, hot bins and the like. This is great because it shows that more and more people are giving value to composting as a means to deal with organic waste and they give value to the compost itself.

I've felt so despondent recently around waste and recycling. If there is one thing that is a big problem in my home town of Parys, it is litter. It really is a serious problem. In the week before Decorex, I was at Pick 'n Pay, packing my groceries into my reusable shopping bags. I looked down the row of checkouts and saw that I was the only person there not using - and buying every time - PNP's plastic shopping bags! (no, they didn't pull old bags out of their handbags to reuse, these were crisp and new)

Coming back from Decorex I'm far more optimistic that there is change happening. 

Nice way to see the size difference between the medium (2 x 100 litre shells) and large (2 x 200 litre shells).

As a result of being at Decorex, we have added two new colours to our range - grey and earth. We met a number of people in complexes and estates where they are restricted from having brightly-coloured items that do not go with the colour scheme of the place. Our new colours go well with each other and they also pair beautifully with our existing green, orange and yellow colours. I fetched plastic from our supplier on Thursday and we'll be moulding the first of the new colour units on Monday.

We also learned a bunch of other things from the visitors to our stand:

• Many are not composting but they want to. They're currently tossing all of their kitchen waste and garden waste out with the trash. They want to do better.
• People think that compost smells. A healthy compost should smell earthy. Good health is achieved by adding a mix of wet and dry materials and regular tumbling.
• Different areas of Jo'burg have rat problems. The rats go for compost heaps and so people have stopped composting as a way to prevent rats coming to their gardens. Our YOLO Compost Tumbler is a closed unit with a lockable latch. Rats, mice, monkeys and dogs can't get into it.

A jar of 8-week old, unfinished compost from my small YOLO Compost Tumbler at home. The jar started off almost full and by the end of the expo it has reduced in volume by half - natural composting process. These jars of compost were really useful to show people what unfinished compost looks like, why it needs to mature (for the last-added contents to compost and catch up to the first-added contents) and for them to smell the mix ("not bad", "earthy", "amazing" were some comments).

A jar of finished compost from my YOLO Compost Tumbler at home. This mix is just kitchen waste with egg shells, torn up egg trays and dry leaves to balance the wet materials from the kitchen. Again people were amazed that it doesn't smell. Friends, compost shouldn't smell bad. The only time it smells bad is if it is too wet and it doesn't have enough oxygen. It's the anaerobic decomposition that makes it smell nasty. This tumbler shell that I emptied (and put some into a jar) was my 5th shell emptied since mid January, when I was using a prototype tumbler. I weighted the contents of the shell when I emptied it - 7.5kg! And mostly just kitchen waste that had composted. Amazing!

We're quite certain that 10 years ago - and even five years ago - our YOLO Compost Tumbler would be a harder sell. Times have changed and people are becoming more conscious and aware of the state of the environment and that we have to do our bit in our homes. Our timing is just right.

When you hear reports that there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish by 2050, scientists are not being alarmist. Just looking around me at the litter in my town, this statement is hardly surprising.

Over the past 18 months, since I moved to Parys, I've been making small changes to our household to reduce the waste coming into our home and what we put out on garbage day.

The most significant changes include filling up glass bottles with milk instead of buying two-litre plastic containers, composting all of our kitchen and garden waste and, recently, taking my own fabric bags to the store to buy loose items like bananas, ginger, garlic and rolls. As a result, we've downsized our trash bin twice and are now down to a waste paper bin for our weekly household trash. I'm sure we can do better too.

The road with our new company is still long. This experience at Decorex was immensely valuable for speaking to people and making new contacts. There are a number of exciting opportunities to come.

Zero Waste Parys - refilling bottles

Zero Waste Parys #2 for the 22 June 2017 issue of Parys Gazette

In my quest to focus on waste – what I’m buying, using, reusing, recycling and throwing away – I’m searching for zero and low-waste alternatives to items I regularly use. My aim is to refuse unnecessary packaging and to reduce the amount of waste that I put out on trash day. Items that I see regularly in my plastic recycling bag that I put out each week for the informal recycling collectors are plastic bottles. Instead of buying products in new bottles, there should be options to refill – not only water but also milk and juice. The good news is that there are.

Water 
We have an abundance of drinking-water stores in town where you can take along your own containers to fill them with clean drinking water. Prices range from R3 to R5 for five litres. Plastics are, by nature, a clean and hygienic material. Refilling your five-litre or 25-litre household containers regularly with clean drinking water will not pose a health hazard. Store water in a cool place out of the sun and keep an eye out for algae growth if you leave water in the container for a long period.

A good wash and thoroughly drying the container will solve this issue and make the container ready for reuse. What can pose a health risk are everyday drinking bottles. Contamination from hands and saliva ‘backwash’ can lead to bacterial growth, especially in bottles kept at room temperature for an extended period.

Disposable plastic bottles – the kind that you buy water and softdrinks in from the store – are not made to be reused repeatedly. They suffer from wear-and-tear, thinning, scratches and cracks (bacterial like to grow in these scratches and cracks!). Avoid buying throw-away bottles of beverages and instead invest in reusable containers that you can refill. Sports bottles and glass bottles are long-lasting alternatives. Just remember to wash them out with warm, soapy water between uses.

Milk
I’ve usually bought milk from the supermarket in plastic bottles or long-life Tetra Pak boxes, which are a recycling nightmare. With 2l milk bottles dominating my plastic recycling, I needed to do things differently.

Fortunately, we have the Farm Inn. Here they have milk on tap so you can take along your own containers to fill with fresh milk. This full-cream milk comes from Rietpoort Suiwel (Dairy), which is located only a few kilometres outside of town in the direction of Fochville. When it comes to hygiene and refilling containers, glass bottles are best for dairy.

Remember to thoroughly wash your bottles before refilling.

Farm Inn does have other dairy products – cream, yoghurt, butter, but these are in regular plastic packaging in standard volumes. Farm Inn is located on Van Coller Street, near the intersection with Luyt Str – less than 200 metres from the traffic lights.

If you’re buying milk from the supermarket, it is better value and less packaging overall to purchase Wynn-with Dairy Farm’s four-litre milk containers rather than standard one or two-litre options. These can be repurposed and upcycled for use in the garden or for crafting.

Fresh fruit juice 
Farm Inn also stocks fresh fruit juice on tap. Take along your own containers and fill them with fresh juice.

Reusing long-lasting plastic and glass bottles for water, milk and juice will already have a huge impact on the volume of plastic packaging that you throw out each week. This is an easy change to make once you know where to get your packaging-free refill.

ENDS

Zero Waste Parys

I wouldn't classify myself as an all-out radical greeny-beany, but I am aware and considerate especially when it comes to litter, waste and recycling.

Since I first got my hands on our pre-production prototype of our YOLO Compost Tumbler in mid-January, I've been an avid and successful composter. Putting our kitchen cuttings into it has made a massive difference to the bin in our kitchen (reduced volume and diminished odours) and to producing useful compost that I toss into the garden.

Top: Our small YOLO Compost Tumbler. Each shell is 45 litres in volume
Bottom: Our medium YOLO Compost Tumbler. Each shell is 100-litres in volume

I've been recycling plastics, paper, metal and glass for years by separating waste at home and taking bags to recycling sites or putting it out for the informal recycling collectors. They earn a living by collecting recyclables and taking them to recycling centres where they are paid a small amount - but an amount nonetheless. Having a compost tumbler completed the circle by being able to recycle organic waste too.

Even with all of this going on, my stomach turns when I see the volume of waste that comes out of our home - even if it is going to recycling. Every two weeks a bag like this goes onto our curb for Johannes, our local informal recycling collector.

Packaging is to blame. Almost everything is packaged in plastic - printed in bright colours to catch your attention and to make the product look attractive. The only way to reduce this is by changing my shopping habits and taking my refusal of plastic packaging up a notch further than just taking my own fabric shopping bags to the supermarket.

Zero Waste advocate Bea Johnson was in South Africa recently for a speaking tour. My mom put me onto her after she heard Bea on the radio. Watching a short video on Bea's Zero Waste Home website was the catalyst I needed to think about how to do things differently - especially around taking my own containers to stores.

A big one coming out of my home are two-litre milk bottles - my bunch drink a lot of milk. In the past two weeks I have eliminated these plastic milk bottles by filling up my one-litre glass bottles at the local farm store where they have fresh farm milk on tap.

This one was easy. Other changes require more thought, especially with supermarkets here where there is very little that one can pick from a counter and have put into your own container. But, I'm living in a small town and we have shop owners who may be keen to jump into offering more products in bulk containers from which customers can fill their own containers. Even our dried fruit and nuts store in town offers only packaged products.

I'm on a mission and with small-town change-is-possible in mind, I contacted our local Parys Gazette newspaper editor and asked her if there was space for me to write a regular column about waste and recycling and Bea Johnson's 5Rs of "Refuse what you do not need, Reduce what you do need, Reuse what you consume, Recycle what you cannot Refuse, Reduce or Reuse, and Rot (Compost) the rest (and only in that order)". When there is space the pieces will be published; otherwise they'll feature on the Parys Gazette website.

I submitted my first piece this morning and it is already online.

Added to this, I've created a 'Zero Waste Parys' Google Map where I'll add location droppers with descriptions as I explore my little town, speak to shop owners and find ways that I can reduce what I bring into my home by refusing to accept packaging.

Changing my behaviour and modifying my shopping patterns isn't going to happen overnight. My head is in the right space to do it and I have a plan. I need to make these changes. We all need to make these changes.