by Nissa Hanna
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- Composters are gaining ground as gardeners recycle greenery and food scraps, but another ingredient — pet poop — can be more difficult to safely incorporate. The Samu, a robotic composter, is making sure that waste is saved for the garden.
- Created by the Japan-based Tohoku Kankyo company, the approximately 30-pound Samu (which resembles a dog) can turn up to 1,000 grams of pet waste per day into compost (TechGetReviews.com 5.6.09).
- The poop-to-compost process is simple: users fill the composter with a proprietary substance (and refill every several months), dump the waste in, close the lid, push a button, and Samu gets to work.
WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS
- The Great Recession has caused consumers to be more resourceful. We’ve seen them adopt austere values — like scrimping and reusing — to make the most of what’s readily available.
- And more specifically, avid gardeners don’t want to waste all that poop produced by their pets. A product that takes the health concerns and mess out of composting that material helps gardeners mine their resources.
RESOURCES
- Tohoku Kankyo: Samu is only readily available in Japan where it comes in four colors and costs around $900
