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A zero-price waste stream can still carry an expensive commitment
A zero-price waste stream is not necessarily free and available.
01 · The invoice
A zero invoice is not a free input
It may already feed animals, enter composting or biogas, or sit inside a collection contract. The invoice can say zero while the commitment is real.
Before treating that stream as an input to a new process, I would ask:
- Who controls it, and for how long?
- Who collects and transports it?
- How much arrives after contamination, packaging, preprocessing loss and seasonal variation?
- What still needs secondary treatment after the useful fraction is removed?
- Which buildings, utilities, labour and storage does the new route require?
02 · The comparison
Compare on the same boundary
Only then can “free waste” be compared with the current route on the same boundary.
Black soldier fly bioconversion may fit. The existing route may remain better. The price at the gate does not decide that by itself.
03 · Hidden commitment
What is easiest to miss
What hidden commitment is easiest to miss in a waste stream: the contract, logistics, existing use or residual treatment?
Keep exploring
Related topics and pages
- Articles library — the written guides this post joins
- BSF business course — where the costs, income and case validation behind a route are taught
- The business case starts with the waste route — why one biowaste project can hold two separate business cases
Read next
- The business case starts with the waste route — why one biowaste project can hold two separate business cases
- Before changing the waste route, establish the baseline — how to put the current waste route on one page before comparing alternatives
- Five questions for a fair biowaste route comparison — five questions that put competing biowaste proposals on the same basis
- One operation, three businesses, part 1/4: the principle — why one BSF operation holds three separate businesses and three honest P&Ls
Next step
Compare the stream on one boundary
Manna can help put the existing use, contract, logistics and residual treatment of a stream beside a possible black soldier fly route.