Over the next six weeks I'll be working with Hagamos Composta, an organic waste and composting initiative, through MakeSense and the Laidlaw Foundation. It is a non-governmental organisation based in several locations (Mexico City, Spain, Honduras, Costa Rica...) that provides local businesses and individuals with an efficient way of composting.
They run on a subscription model for families and businesses, who receive a kit of two reusable buckets. A collection team then swings by, picks up the full bucket of food scraps, and leaves a clean one in its place, so households never have to think about washing anything or storing waste longer than necessary. The organic material then goes to composting sites outside the city, where it slowly transforms over the course of several months. Eventually, some of that finished compost makes its way back to the very families who contributed the original waste, closing the loop.
Our project mission is to help professionalize and systematize Hagamos Composta's regenerative impact so that it can scale without losing what makes it work. We are going for two main deliverables: first, a strategic "growth foundations" map, which is essentially digging into their internal processes and relationships to spot bottlenecks and opportunities. Second, a "seed funding" resource guide for circular infrastructure, meaning a financial model and funding roadmap that could help each Hagamos Composta location acquire the specialized equipment (thermometers, screening machines...) it needs at its particular stage of growth. After meeting them for the first time today, we were pleasantly surprised by their hosipitality and openness to our ideas and numerous questions. We're now all looking forward to dive head-on into the project and provide the best help we can !
Being in a new country with a vastly different culture from mine obviously involved a bit of tourism. While I haven't visited much of the city (and probably won't be able to, seeing how vast it is), I took the chances I had to experience the place: local street food, historical monuments and a lot of walking around neighborhoods. As someone currently studying in Switzerland, the city could not be more different from what I'm now used to: trees and plants everywhere with roots breaking through the pavement, hectic traffic, and neighborhoods so different from one another that it feels like traveling from city to city. This week also wouldn't have been as fun without the other scholars I'm sharing this experience with. Being able to explore the city while meeting other people my age who live completely different lives and study very different things was an enlightening experience, and one I can't wait to continue.