Skip to main content

Lendlease uses Goterra to manage high volume commercial and retail food waste at Barangaroo

The project

In October 2020, Goterra commissioned the first commercial Modular Infrastructure for Biological Services (MIB) for Sydney’s iconic Barangaroo towers, in partnership with Lendlease. Designed as a precinct of the future, Bangaroo is perfect for a future food solution.

The project demonstrated the MIB’s capability to process food waste quickly and cheaply onsite. A unit in the basement converts high volume commercial and retail food waste from the towers into low volume protein and fertiliser, eliminating waste logistics.

Solving waste management logistics

Logistics is the biggest problem in waste management. And it's completely upended in this solution.

Having a unit on site with a company that really believes in integrated systems to deliver a circular economy is what it's all about for Goterra.

The Lendlease story

Lendlease is one Australia’s largest and most progressive property managers. Dedication to innovation and commitment to sustainability has seen Lendlease ranked among the world’s most innovative companies.

The company has set a target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2025 and absolute zero by 2040. Working with Goterra is a natural fit with this philosophy. Using black soldier fly larvae to manage food waste is a highly innovative approach and reduces the emissions caused by sending food waste to landfill by 97%. It also supports the journey to a more circular economy, as it uses waste to produce high quality sustainable insect protein and soil enhancer.

Why Lendlease chose Goterra

Lendlease has trialled a number of onsite waste solutions at Barangaroo before Goterra’s MIB.

This project was designed to disrupt the linear approach to managing food waste, where food is sent to landfill or composting rather than using it as an input to produce a high value resource.

Lendlease wanted to create a demonstration project that addresses a range of problems associated with this linear approach. This included:

  • greenhouse gas emissions from food waste in landfill
  • nutrient loss from the food cycle
  • impact and expense of waste logistics
  • lack of innovation in the traditional waste industry.

Goterra’s solution

The unit we deployed at Barangaroo is a world first. Other onsite solutions exist, but they tend to down-cycle nutrients into compost. Or worse, flush them down the drain. Our infrastructure achieves superior nutrient cycling, converting post-consumer food waste into sustainable protein and soil conditioner. This is the highest possible application on the waste hierarchy.

The decentralised MIB eliminates the need for organic waste management logistics. Our light vehicle services the MIB once every 12 days as part of our contract with Lendlease.

The unit is silent, odourless and accepts all types of food waste including meat, citrus, dairy and biodegradable packaging.

The results

The unit processes over 10 tonnes of food waste per month, producing 2 tonnes of insect larvae and 500kg of soil conditioner. Volumes will increase as we bring other parts of the precinct onboard over time.

Managing food waste with insects radically reduces the carbon emissions of food waste sent to landfill as well as producing sustainable outputs. At current volumes, we are preventing over 20 tonnes of carbon emissions from food waste per month.

Partner with us

If your organisation generates organic waste, and you would like to play your part in growing the emerging circular economy in Australia, please get in touch.

Contact us