West Yorkshire Mayor’s Innovation Prize
The Competition
The West Yorkshire Mayor’s Innovation Prize was a regional competition launched at the beginning of 2023, that called for local innovations centred around solving climate change issues. It aimed to empower youth and inspire new, out-of-the-box thinking, with age categories of 16-18, 19-21, and 22-26. Prize money was available for the winners to turn their conceptual innovations into a reality, alongside 1-1 workshops with RTC North and a meeting with the West Yorkshire Mayor.
The Beginning
3 other students and I were studying Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Leeds at the time of the competition launch. Strikes were going on at the University, and since we were looking for something productive to spend our time towards, the competition seemed like the perfect opportunity to stimulate our brains while getting something to put on our CVs. Naturally, we wanted our conceptual innovation to be related to our course. It became clear very quickly after just a bit of research, just how big of a problem food-waste was, not just in Leeds but across wider West Yorkshire. Food-waste releases a large amount of methane when decomposing at landfill, which is 25x more damaging than carbon dioxide. It is also a massive waste of nutrients, that could be recycled and re-used for various applications. 7.7 million tonnes of food-waste are released every year by businesses and households, which has the same negative environmental impact of chopping down 238 million trees!
The Idea Progresses
We spent the first month doing research around the city, hoping to discover the reasons why people were not recycling their food-waste. After speaking to people from all sorts of backgrounds and demographics, we identified three core barriers. The first was knowledge - some of the people we interviewed were not aware food-waste could be recycled. The second barrier was motivation - many of those who were aware, just didn’t care enough about the waste to do anything about it. The final and most common group were those that did have the knowledge, did have the motivation, but just lacked the physical opportunity to recycle their food-waste. The council did not provide a food-waste recycling service which made things difficult for people. Many did not have the space to compost themselves, and the local private recycling services were too expensive to consider. This was incredibly useful to discover, as we now knew that our innovation had to provide a medium of overcoming every single one of these barriers, to maximise its potential impact.
We decided that the most beneficial way of tackling Leeds food-waste was to to redirect it away from landfill, towards local growers. These growers were spending a large amount on store-bought compost, to use as a fertilizer for their produce, and could save a lot of money by making compost out of food-waste instead.
The Final Idea
Our final idea was a scheme called ‘Compost-It’, that was based on the principles of ‘Collection, Connection, and Education’. The ‘Collection’ aspect addressed the lack of physical opportunity, by offering food-waste recycling service to houses that was free, convenient, and reliable. We did not charge for the service, and we even provided free caddies to households who signed up, as we wanted to make the process as easy and accessible as possible.
The ‘Connection’ aspect served to challenge the barrier of motivation, by creating an environment that would encourage people within communities to recycle. It facilitated links between households and local growers so that they could see how their food-waste was helping produce compost first-hand. It also explored volunteering opportunities, and offering incentives for recycling in the form of discounts at local businesses.
The ‘Education’ aspect was centred around improving education about food-waste recycling, through facilitating workshops and seminars in schools, community spaces, and businesses. We emphasised the importance of recycling food-waste, how people can compost themselves, and how people can prevent food-waste from occuring in the first place.
Deadline Day
After 3 months of late nights, frustrating dead-ends, and even some passionate disagreements here and there, the team got together at the final event to hear the results of the competition. The event was held at The Rose Bowl Theatre in the Leeds School of Arts. Starting the day pitching our ideas to the expert industry judges - Phil Witcherley, Deb Hetherington and Jim Farmely, as well as the general public, we transitioned from nervous, inexperienced students in the first few talks, to confident, enthusiastic change-makers by the end!
We were lucky enough to be surrounded by so many amazing future change-makers in the other competitors, and honestly didn’t really think we had much of a chance, but nevertheless had such an amazing time during the 3 months. It already felt like we were winners from the journey we went through and the several things we had learned. This did not make it any less surreal, however, when we found out that we won the 22-26 age category! There are no words to accurately describe how emotional and proud we were, and the team spend the next hour in disbelief as we shared the news with our friends and family. It still feels surreal writing about it nearly 2 years after it happened!
After the Competition
Compost-It was exclusively meant to be a concept for the competition while us students were waiting for University strikes to be over. As fate would have it, we developed a strong emotional bond with the idea - it almost felt like our baby - and we couldn’t just give it up. Two of us decided to take the plunge and continue exploring it after the competition ended. After spending way too much time procrastinating on University work once strikes had finished to develop Compost-It, we finally launched a pilot scheme at the end of August 2023 in Roundhay, alongside a local market garden called Passion4Plants. It was the first step in a rollercoaster of a journey, and I haven’t looked back since!
