Credit: CNET

FINALLY, one of my dreams has come true! For the curious listeners out there, picture to yourself a world without food waste. You peel bananas or oranges, crack eggs, cut up vegetables, let food expire or usually have leftover food from meals. All of these scenarios create the same situation, a world where the amount of food going to landfills is obscene and degrades extremely slowly. Regular composting takes a long time, usually months, and often needs to be tended to carefully for nutrient composition, heat and air. But finally a machine has been invented by the Whirlpool Corporation and developed by their W labs to turn all of your spare or rotten foods into fertilizer.

The Zera Food Recycler resembles a large white trash can consisting of a trash bin component where the food is processed and a storage bin at the bottom where the fertilizer is emptied into. First you place a plant-based Zera Additive Pack into the trash can portion and fill until it’s full. Once it reaches maximum capacity all you do is press a start button to start the “transforming cycle”, as the company calls it. A large number of blades in the trash can then literally blend the food while being heated and injected with a stream of fresh air simultaneously to enhance the degradation process. When the process is done (which takes 24 hours) the food is reduced to 2/3 of its original size and deposited into the storage bin. The fertilizer can then be used immediately for your garden, lawn, or whatever it is you use fertilizer for. It also has an app that allows you to start and stop composting remotely.

Zera can turn a week’s worth of food into fertilizer or around 3.5 kg. It was also carefully researched as to how this fertilizer can be used and its bet use was for topsoil. The direct benefit will be that you can save money on food waste as well as fertilizers eventually. But there were a few grey areas. They didn’t mention how long you can store the fertilizer so I suppose it’s best to use it right away. It also hasn’t been mentioned if you can place liquids or hard candies into the Zera yet and the full range of food that can be used hasn’t been mentioned either. Now for the good news.

Whirlpool has released Zera on Indiegogo to impressive results. Their goal of $50,000 was easily met and has climbed to about $292,000 as of this posting with over 400 backers. There were early bird specials at $700 and $900 which are now gone, unfortunately. The only one left is $1,000 while the eventual price will be about $1,200. Luckily, based on their pricing for the additive packs it is very cheap so your main investment would be a large amount up front. Whirlpool will unveil Zera at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas so we’ll get our first live demonstration and the Zera itself will come out around mid-2017. Interestingly Zera isn’t the only one available. A company called Food Cycle Science has another similar food waste recycler called Food Cycle which essentially does the same thing but with 1 kg, taking 3 hours and costing $349. But either way the future of recycling is slowly emerging right before your eyes.

https://wlabsinnovations.com/pages/zera

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/whirlpool-announces-zera-food-recycler/

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/zera-food-recycler-recycling–2#/

https://www.nofoodwaste.com/foodcycler

Credit: Food Cycle Science

 

For more articles related to sustainability go to Sustainability and check out my other pages for excellent content on science, technology, history and more!

 

 

 

The best way to support this website is to share it and this article across social media and with your friends.

Check out the info below the article. You can see my Facebook & Twitter Feed, different categories, subscription services, subscribe for emails and more.

I now have a MakerSupport as well. Feel free to subscribe to me there as well:
https://www.makersupport.com/tomeoftrovius

Here is a referral link so that you can start your very own account and begin supporting creators:
https://www.makersupport.com/tomeoftrovius/?rc=tomeoftrovius

Support my site on Patreon for as little as $1 per month. You contribute to the articles, you create the supply AND demand. For only $12 a YEAR you can play an active role in facilitating the creation of amazing personal content available to very few people:
https://www.patreon.com/tomeoftrovius

You can support me on Minds by signing up for a monthly subscription:
https://www.minds.com/TomeofTrovius

Pick freedom over censorship. Sign up today at Minds.com:
https://www.minds.com/register;referrer=TomeofTrovius

For questions or submissions contact this e-mail account:
asktomeoftrovius@gmail.com

Check out my Steemit blog:
https://steemit.com/@tomeoftrovius

Join the Discord and join the discussion:
https://discord.gg/Vm7NDCy