Woman’s company works to help cut down Bogota’s waste build up

World Today

The United Nations warned that the yearly usage of natural resources by cities will jump by 125 percent. A study predicted that by 2050, nearly 90 billion tons will be used, up from 40 billion tons in 2010.

If nothing is done, experts warned the planet cannot sustain itself.

CGTN’s Michelle Begue reported on one woman’s effort to combat this problem in Colombia.

Diana Martinez had been studying waste management for a decade. Not only was she alarmed by the amount of waste humans produce, but also the fact that waste hasn’t been properly disposed.

Bogota alone creates 7,000 tons of solid waste daily and 60 percent of it is organic waste that could be reused.

“When waste is sent to landfills this causes problems, it contaminates the water, the earth and the air. What we wanted to do was accelerate the decomposition so that we could avoid having it go to landfills,” explained Martinez.

With the use of biotechnology, Diana and her team of experts found a way to reduce the time waste decomposition is processed from six months to 10 days. In 2016, she took the technology and co-founded the company Bioambientar.

“Our business concept is to take and transform your organic waste into money or food,” said Martinez.

Her company sells courses and compost kits aimed to teach people how to create less trash, separate waste and then transform the organic material into compost that can be used in urban agriculture. The kits range from $5 to $25.

Coschool, a Bogota-based school that had 10 employees, contacted Bioambientar to install a composting system in their office. “They are making recycling, composting and protecting the environment, easy for organizations like us that have so many other things to do,” said Henry May, the school’s General Director.

In just two years, Martinez had reached 1,000 users with their at home kits, and worked with 10 different restaurants and supermarkets that are working to enhance their social responsibility. Bioambientar hopes to make a bigger impact with a large scale Bogota composting plant to tend to these clients.