Global estimates show that about one billion tons of waste is produced annually.
If this waste is mismanaged, this might hurt the environment,
and that is where insects come in.
Their efficiency in converting this waste
into nutrient-rich biomass, has been shown to improve soil health.
Also, insects can be transformed into food and feed
that can actually meet the nutritional requirements of animals and humans.
And insect production also goes a long way to create jobs and income globally.
Two major companies, Sanergy and InsectiPro,
are actually driving these enterprises
so as to create a future-proof circular food system that we can rely on.
Globally, there has been a projection that by 2050
the world's population is going to swell to about 9.7 billion people.
This will lead to increased demand both for food and protein sources.
And this will require a lot of land, and a lot of water.
About 1,900 species of insect are already being consumed by two billion people globally.
Based on the efficiency of insect production systems,
there’s a huge future for insects as food for humans.
When you research 'What are Kenyans malnourished in'?
The answer is zinc, iron and protein.
And what is a cricket very high in? It's zinc and iron.
So, we thought this was a good additive to flour
to make it nutritious to help us close that nutritional gap.
Our cricket setup looks like this.
These are cricket eggs. Each lady can lay 300 to 400 eggs in total
over a period of two to three weeks.
And after 10 days, we transfer them to their new home.
In these crates we have our feeding trays with our dry feed.
We have fresh leaves from our garden.
Week four to five,
you can see a few of them have become adults
and they have wings, but most of them are what we call
at a good harvesting stage.
Our final stage and the noise that you hear
or the noise that’s most associated with crickets,
is where they mate to lay eggs.
Welcome to our mini-kitchen.
When we harvest the crickets we put them first in the freezer.
After a day or so in the freezer,
we let them defrost and we get them ready for the oven.
We’ve done a large-scale market study in the entire Nairobi.
Surprisingly, it was more appreciated in the lower middle class parts of Nairobi.
So we started focusing more on cricket flour
because cricket flour you can include in everything.
We like it, the kids like it. Very nutritious.
Everything about it is better, we are raising the bar a bit higher.
Times are changing fast and things are changing fast,
so insects would be a good alternative in the near future.
And I think it will be well received.
The poop that comes from the crickets
you can put back on the field as a more natural fertiliser.
So, it is a circular economy because it is fully closed loop.
The whole idea around Sanergy
is to collect both sanitation and organic waste
and then to process that waste into useful end products
that solve problems on the agriculture side or the energy side.
So, it’s all about a zero waste circular economy approach
to really bring a sustainable solution
that addresses waste management, sanitation,
as well as whatever challenges that we face in agriculture
in terms of soil fertility
as well in terms of animal health and nutrition.
We started off with the toilet side,
the non-profit, Fresh Life.
What we were doing at the time
was setting up Fresh Life toilets within communities.
And the goal there was to safely contain, transport,
and then repurpose that waste into organic fertiliser.
We build infrastructure to be able to contain
both sanitation and organic waste.
And then we build the logistic system
to transport the organic and sanitation waste to our treatment facility.
And then what we do is, we have a production line
for Black Soldier Flies.
The Black Soldier Fly larvae feed on the waste
and then we harvest the larvae.
Then we wash,
pasteurise to remove any pathogens, then we package,
test, then we sell for animal feeds.
The residue that remains after the flies have eaten
is taken through what we call thermophilic composting.
This sanitises the compost. We then cure it through time,
we test, then we package for organic fertiliser.
And as you can imagine you need to maintain a colony.
So, a portion of the larvae that we produce
from the Black Soldier Flies
are allowed to go back in to become the colony,
so as to give us the larvae for the next cycle of feeding.
At the very core we view ourselves as the solution for cities.
But what is interesting about the two products
that would be insect-based protein, BSF,
for purposes of feeding animals, and then organic fertiliser
for purposes of growing food,
is that they take us back to where the food is produced in the rural areas.
So, it means that farmland is then more productive,
then it means that the animals are more productive.
That food comes back to the city.
That food again creates waste, and then the cycle continues.
There’s a huge opportunity for commercialisation of insects
and also creation of jobs.
We have trained close to 6,000 farmers on how
to produce insects, either for food or for feed.
And we’ve seen a lot of tremendous changes
in terms of their livelihood improvement
because of adoption of this technology.
Looking at our dependence on livestock and crop production
and the implication that it has on climate change,
we will have to incorporate insects into our current food systems.