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Feb 5, 2017
Fertilizer from Food Waste
Tinia Pina is making fertilizer from food waste. How cool is that? During our interview, we learn that Tinia was volunteering in an inner city school located in what we call a food desert - an area where access to fresh food is either non existing or not affordable to the population.
She was helping students study for an examination and noticed that most had donuts for breakfast. While they started out the day with lots of energy, after a few hours, the students were unable to concentrate while she, fueled with a healthy breakfast, had no problem to keep going.
She also noticed that New York was producing huge amounts of food waste which had to be transported far to be disposed of. These were some of the experiences which gave Tina the idea to produce fertilizer from food waste and ideally help to grow fresh produce right in the areas where none was available.
Tinia Pina’s Bio:
Tinia received her B.S. in Business Information Technology from Virginia Tech and has six years of experience in the financial services industry and five years as a business development professional in the sustainability industry. Her experiences related to advocacy and community building through food waste management, food systems and sustainability have fueled her passion to increase our communities’ resilience, prosperity, and knowledge to help us live more conscious lives. Tinia’s pioneering business model has earned her a Huffington Post Millennial Impact Grant, the American Express Emerging Innovator award and a MillerCoors Urban Entrepreneur grant, among other honors.
Our interview
1:00 Introducing Tinia Pina and Re-Nuble
3:00 What is Hydroponics?
6:12 Different Hydroponic systems
- NFT short for Nutrient Film Technique
- Deep Water Pool Technique
7:00 Re-Nuble gives the same results as mineral fertilizers which is difficult if not impossible to achieve with other organic fertilizers. The best part, Re-Nuble is made from organic food waste.
7:30 Even Ikea sells hydroponic system
- most common crops; basil and other herbs, lettuce, tomatoes
- can be grown indoors or in a protected outdoor area
8:30 Why Tinia started the company
- Work in the financial service industry
- Volunteer work with New York Cares
- Awareness of food waste on one side and bad nutrition for the students on the other
- Consciences and spiritual person
12:50 New York City Ag Collective
- Bringing food to underserved areas
- Teaching skills to High school students
- New York Sunworks is doing a great job already
17:25 Vertical Farming and repurposing of empty warehouse spaces
19:25 Rooftop Farms
Gotham Greens http://gothamgreens.com/our-farms/
Brooklyn Grange http://www.brooklyngrangefarm.com/
19:52 Aquaponics
Edenworks http://edenworks.com/
21:00 Ways to follow Re-Nuble and Tinia
Website and social media links:
(1.) Company website: www.re-nuble.com
(2.) Twitter: https://twitter.com/re_nuble
(3.) Google +: https://plus.google.com/+Re-nuble
(4.) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReNuble/
(5.) Instagram: instagram.com/re_nuble
(6.) Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/renuble/
22:00 Sourcing locally and what is organic.
Sourcing from a 200 mi radius
Organic vegetable waste
Omri certified input http://www.omri.org/
23:40 The Re-Nuble products https://www.re-nuble.com/collections/all
27:26 Biomimicry
29:56 How to obtain the Re-Nuble fertilizers
31:00 A fertilizer has to be permitted in each State, who knew?
Did Tinia’s background in the financial sector make it easy breezy to start this business? Tina shares her experience and lots of resources for anybody who is thinking about starting their own business.
Score www.score.org/
Work full time for the first three years and around the clock on the company and invested all her money into the project
Received some grants for research and development
Project seed money
Gust https://gust.com/
Setting a deadline to evaluate if it is time to go back to a full time job
Getting product into thought influencers hands to evaluate and give feedback
Future plans: Be able to serve the industrial customer
Explore interest in the process expressed by countries like Tanzania and Pakistan where there is an abundance of food waste, but not so much water.
39:00 Tinia turns the tables and starts interviewing me
Urban Permaculture
Toby Hemenway who sadly passed away recently
His book: Gaia’s Garden
Links to places and organizations near and dear to Tinia:
(1.) NYC Agriculture Collective
(2.) NY Sunworks
(3.) Sprout By Design
(4.) Skyponics
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