Carole Nelson Brown
unlike traditional composting, you can throw in dairy, meat and fish scraps – no hard beef/pork bones though
We are all concerned with the amount of waste we produce, whether it be recycling paper/glass/plastics, garbage filling up landfills and wondering what really happens to the stinky stuff we throw into the green bin every week. If you live in a place with some property, you might compost outdoors but if, like many of us, you live in an apartment, condo or don’t have the ability or desire to compost outdoors, you really didn’t have a lot of options.
Then, along came Tero, a countertop, electronic composter that is, basically, composting for dummies. Not much bigger than a bread cooker, you scrape in your food waste and when it’s full (it holds up to 4 litres), the machine chops, mulches and dries the contents and you are left with a little cup full of enriched fertilizer to use in your garden. Thanks to the carbon filter, there is no smell and the resulting fertilizer can be used straight away or you can store it in a covered container until spring garden season starts. The actual cycle takes anywhere from 3-8 hrs depending on the type and volume of food waste and makes no more noise than your dishwasher.
“We do have a majority of women in our organization. This was not deliberate, but we are proud to support women’s equality, and it is a vision we want to continue to follow as we grow our business. We have observed that the industry is very male and there are only a few female role models. So, it would be a pleasure to be a role model to young women and to demonstrate that it is possible for ambitious women to be at the origin of a unique and promising innovation. Being an inspiration to other women who want to start their own business in this field to have a positive impact on society would be a real honor.”
What could I love more? Young, Canadian women in tech producing a product made here in Canada. Elizabeth Coulombe and Valerie Laliberte were looking for a graduation project in their final year at Universite Laval that would meet the criteria of selecting a problem and then creating a product to solve it. They conducted surveys and found that nearly half of Canadian households don’t compost, whether it be the fear of attracting bugs and critters or just the lack of knowledge about composting or thinking it will be too time consuming. They had found their problem, now they just had to design something to solve it.
“With Tero, our vision is global. We want to be the reference for food waste management in the home“
When I asked about the challenges of launching a new product (and their first) during a pandemic, this was what they told me:
“The pandemic has certainly been a challenge for our business to launch. We have had to overcome many challenges in procurement and transportation. However, as a young company,we don’t have heavy procedures in place yet, so we can move and react quickly.”
this gadget has everything: Designed by women, in Canada, made in Canada, no smell, no bugs, looks great, idiot proof, dishwasher safe
The Tero is energy efficient (uses less than 1kw per cycle), sleek, compact enough to have a spot on your counter and innovative enough to nab awards in three industrial design categories at the 14th Grands Prix du Design awards. It comes in either white or black and frankly, I cannot wait to get my greedy little paws on one of these babies after attending a demo so I could see it in action. As a cook AND a gardener, this thing is going to make my garden happy and the local racoons sad but that is just an added bonus.
you can buy the basic Tero or the Tero Plus, which includes more bells and whistles like wifi and an app to control it
Click here to read more about the Tero and order