MIC recently sat down with Ninna Larsen from Reground for our podcast, Wingrove Street, and discussed the origins of her business, the value in collecting data, and the power of small business on big issues.
Reground is a waste educational service. It collects isolated, separated waste streams such as coffee grounds, chaff, and soft plastics from cafes and diverts them to local end users such as home gardeners and local plastics recyclers.
“For us,” Ninna says, “it’s all about source separation and hyperlocal diversion.”
The roots of Reground reach back to Denmark, where Ninna grew up, where waste strategies were first implemented back in the 1970s. Now, Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency set a goal that in 2022, they will be recycling 50 % of their household waste.
“Denmark has trialled and tested ways to recover waste and use it as a resource—to innovate with it, and create businesses around it,” Ninna explains. “A great example is my parents’ house. We have eight bins. That’s common practice. It’s actually easier—if I have waste to dispose of, I can identify which bin it needs to go in. That’s one of the things I inherently brought with me to Australia. This understanding of where you can go as a society in terms of waste.”
Ninna came to Australia in 2012 and started working in hospitality. After a conversation with her boss on the reality of coffee waste, she brainstormed solutions and began testing using the CERES gardens as her first end user. “Because the model with Reground relies on both ends, I can’t ignore the end user of community gardens or home gardeners.”
She tested the service over four months, providing the café with a wheelie bin for coffee waste and diverting the grounds to the CERES gardens. The most significant finding was that the café produced a lot more coffee than she had expected and that the rate at which CERES used the grounds didn’t keep up with the supply.
“Quickly and very early on,” Ninna says, “I was forced to develop a network of end users. That paused bringing on new cafes. I built a folder with research and gardeners started to believe and trust that coffee wasn’t harmful to their soil. That was my first headache in terms of the model. Building the network of end users.”
Reground is now operating out of Melbourne Innovation Centre in Alphington, collaborating with the Melbourne Farmers Market, and value the local community of businesses at MIC. With over 70 cafes across Melbourne, the business is big on data collection.
“It’s the way we prove what we do—not only to our businesses, but to local and state government,” Ninna says. “The government is talking a lot about diverting waste from landfill, but as we’ve seen with the big recycling crisis, even if we could put waste in a recycling bin and feel better about it, that might not actually solve the problem. That’s why we’re putting together a lot of data, so we can measure what works in order to address the avoidance and reduction part of the waste hierarchy.”
Figures that Reground have pulled include saving 485 tonnes of ground coffee from landfill to date, and that on average, the business collects 5,500 kilos per week.
“This year,” Ninna shares, “we’re solidifying our role as a waste behaviour expert. The past few years have been about growth, but this year is about the data and turning it into methods to change behaviour in terms of reduction and waste.”
In a time of short political cycles, business and enterprise can work to maintain priorities and consistent messages about recycling and waste. “To us, it’s about results. We don’t want to be talking about this forever. We want to create evidence and that requires that we don’t just strategise but implement the strategies and showcase the data.”
To wrap up the podcast, we found out what we can all do to help with Reground’s mission.
“Drink coffee at cafes that care about the planet,” Ninna suggests. “Ask cafes what they do with their waste. Drink coffee where there are good operators because we need more of them—and they need your support.”
Click to listen to this month’s Wingrove Street podcast in conversation with Ninna Larsen.
Visit: reground.com.au