Farming the rubbish bin

According to a report recently released by the UK Institution of Mechanical Engineers, up to 50% of the world's harvest is wasted. That corresponds to 1.2-2 billion tonnes of food every year, and is extraordinary when there are 870 million undernourished people in the world (ie consuming less than 2100 calories per day). Not to mention the immense waste of land, energy and water. It is no overstatement that people starve in a planet of extraordinary abundance.

Food waste: an immense challenge that can be overcome.

Spoiled for a lack of markets, not up to quality standards or whatever, there is an immense amount of waste in our food system. And so, to me, the problem of feeding the global population is less a matter of insufficient land or yield, and more a matter of distribution and waste.

To take a leaf from Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountains Institute who refers to the immense opportunity for oil independence through "drilling under Detroit" (ie gaining large quantities of oil by improving fuel efficiency of motor vehicles), there is an equally immense opportunity for "Farming the rubbish bin".

Even more usefully, there are many role models that can be referred to in order to develop up the patchwork that will eventually form a solution to the problem.

Progressing the Garbologie vision

I'm not quite sure what it was, but Friday was an exceptional day. Perhaps it was one too many coffees, perhaps it was a rapid succession of great hits, but I was buzzing all day.

In particular, I got great traction in relation to the culture around Garbologie, and the glass project.

Details and life planning and details

Tonight is time to be brief. It is late and I'm still recovering from two days of jetting across the country.

Details

I had a catch up with a good friend and former colleague today. We were chatting about Garbologie, and she made the remark "So who's going to look after the details?" She went on to say that the ideas, the leadership are all fine for me, but details not so much.

And she is right. Given my druthers, I'd not be looking into the details. However, I have developed a lot since we worked together. While I am now a CEO, it is of an organisation that is so small that my second role is backup accounts person. I am an engineer by trade, and so accounts does not come naturally to me. Accounts (or perhaps more accurately, book keeping) requires a very particular focus on detail and getting each detail correct. I forced myself to learn this skill.

So I think I'll be fine on the details. In this journey of life, I was fortunate enough to pass through a role that contains both the leadership bits I love with the nitty gritty details I need.

Life planning

Thinking about the course my life has taken brought me to another remark from another person. His comment was along the lines that he admires my ability to plan my life. I found that comment a bit shocking. My life feels anything but planned. I don't believe I've ever sat down and worked out the job I mean to have in 5, 10 or 20 years.

As a result, I kind of dismissed the remark as him making sense of my career to date, which certainly does look like a rapid march to ever greater things.

But I then chatted about this remark (much) later with my wife, and she gave me some interesting insights. She concentrated more on how I have themes that I pursue, and I am quite clear in only staying in a role for as long as it services the development of those themes. I leave when my "Use By" date, or my contract (whichever is later), is up. And so in that sense the remark is quite accurate. I do have a clear picture of the theme I am developing. I don't know the specifics of how it will unfold, but I can make decisions as I move along.

Garbologie is the latest decision, and it seems right.

Details

Which spirals me back to a similar, but different, point to where we started.

I don't bother planning my life, if that is to be understood as mapping out a course to get to my destination. I don't believe I could have the information I need to do this. Details of your path are irrelevant beyond a relatively tight timeframe, as they degrade quickly.

Rather than a map, you need to know your destination. A mountain range to head towards, perhaps some boundaries to walk within. With this, you can make incremental decisions without knowing how they all map out.

A mountain range to head towards...
(picture of Hanging Rock, source Sydney Morning Herald)

To do this well, you need to understand details. Knowing the details of each particular decision is important. It means you move forward with wisdom, weighing the various pieces of data up and then moving. Evaluating. Moving. Evaluating.

A continual incremental walk which, guided by a grand theme, creates a path that looks for all the world like a very cunningly planned route.

Garbologie is born

Today (Friday) I signed the papers that mark the birth of Garbologie Pty Ltd. Born on 15 January 2013, Garbologie is now a company. Yippee!!!

A company is born.

The Hero's Journey and Me

To write about myself is not something that comes easily to me. I guess I prefer not to push myself on to others, and presume that others come to this blog because of the Garbologie story or the insights in waste or something similar impersonal.

And yet. And yet. Some of my most popular posts are about the personal journey I am on. My relatively unexciting post about why I couldn't write a post is far and away the most popular I've written. Another popular post is about moving from a job to building a business. A post about my social media epiphany was also well read.

So I am forced to concede that people are interested in the "I", the "Ich" behind the creation of Garbologie. And perhaps it comes to that art of story-writing - in reading about the story of somebody making something anew, we want to see the person transformed through the narrative arc.

The Hero Archetype

It is the Hero's Journey. This archetypal story is deep in our cultural psyche, this tale of the person and the transformation. As I am reminded in a recent post by +Grizwald Grim, it is About Me. Deeply so.

What we can learn from scavengers

It's interesting how popular culture works, with works of a particular theme seeming to cluster together. Or perhaps the clustering is in the mind of the viewer only - having seen one piece of work, another similar piece is filtered from the noise for special attention.

This happened to me where, within the space of a couple of months, I saw the trailer for an upcoming documentary called Landfill Harmonic, and watched a full documentary called Waste Land. They seemed to stumble into my consciousness.

2013 - The Year of Garbologie

My first post for the year (how did that happen?), and I've returned from the few weeks off with some renewed focus and ideas around this blog. Well, perhaps two key ideas.

But before we turn to the ideas, the title. 2013 will be the Year of Garbologie. Why? Because I finish up my day job in May and launch Garbologie. The past year of gently growing Garbologie one day per week will lead to the denouement of Garbologie going live. This is all becoming real - my safe(ish) job is winding up and something new is taking its place. Hopefully something new and beautiful and truly marvellous.

But to the ideas.