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Whirlpool Selling Machine That Turns Food Waste into Fertilizer in Just 24 Hours

The Zera Food Recycler works way faster than composting

By Rain Noe - January 25, 2017

in Food | Sustainable Design

This sounds too good to be true: The folks over at Whirlpool's skunkworks, WLabs, have apparently developed a machine that can turn food waste into fertilizer in just 24 hours. Composting by conventional means ordinarily takes weeks or months; and Naturemill, a company that once made indoor composting machines, stopped selling their machines a couple of years ago, leaving this space wide open.

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Here's how their Zera Food Recycler works:

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At $1,000 a pop the machines ain't cheap, but that hasn't stopped it from being successfully funded on IndieGogo: At press time they'd landed $335,498 on a $50,000 target. There are just ten days left to pledge, and after that you'll have to pay full retail for a Zera—$1,199.

Hey wait a sec—that's a NEW apple, you jerk!

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stephen knifton

7 years ago

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this is great; although a little pricy. but aside from that ... isn't crowd funding sort of supposed to be a tool for individuals or small shops to raise equity ? how does whirlpool hit up indie-gogo for funds ? they're a massive multinational; why don't they hit their own f'ing treasury, instead of competing for scarce crowd-funding funds that the smaller folk could use ?

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Mike Nelson Pedde

7 years ago

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It sounds intriguing, but there's not a lot of information available. Does it only accept vegetable waste or are meat/bones/skin, etc acceptable? Mango or peach pits? How much power does it use? How often does one replace the additive pack? Cost for same? A few to start with.

We have municipal compost collection here and that, combined with municipal recycling reduces our garbage to nearly zero...

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keng min lee

5 years ago

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I would like to know if this machine is available for sale in Singapore and whether it can be used in Singapore's electrical system?

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Sarah Isko

6 years ago

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Dear Sir
I hope this email finds you well.
I would like to get more information how I can market your product related to food recycling in Lebanon - Middle East. kindly let me know what the requirements are.
Thank you,Sarah

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