A LEADER Cooperation A&D Project on the optimum way to minimise food waste in County Kilkenny, Ireland (in cooperation with Slovenian partners) & to create a social enterprise from the residue.

Description

The Analysis & Development (A&D) project involves Kilkenny LEADER Partnership, the EU LEADER Local Action Group (LAG) for the territory, its local partner 3-CEA (the regional energy agency), and other LEADER LAGs in Slovenia, investigating and actioning research on the optimum methods to minimise food waste and the development of systems and business models to make use of the remaining waste for community benefit purposes, such as a social enterprise focusing on by-product use; for example renewable biogas/ biomass energy and soil enrichment products. There are three linked but seperate RFTs for tender in the project: 1. Analysis, research, and development of the optimum options to the end goal of the production of a fully worked through project plan including a business model and costings, etc. In Ireland the project will focus on analysis and development and implementation work needed to establish food waste value chains in the Kilkenny region. This will include research and development of value chains to drive the efficient gathering, segregation, collection, and use of the waste from producers such as the food hospitality sector. The research should investigate the options to use the waste as an energy source through the production of biogas through anaerobic digestion or/ and by composting and recycling of the by or end product as a humus-type soil enricher for gardening, horticulture and farming. The research should be iterative (accepting and providing feedback to the designated stakeholders) and should examine and make recommendations on how the project would be best placed to become a social enterprise (community benefit), but research should not exclude partnership with some commercial parties in the development. The other RFTs in the project: 2. Training in logistical/ technical requirements and promotion to communities. 3. Coordination of the above to the elements and liaison with KLP and other designated stakeholders. can be tendered separately. Lot 248317: An Analysis & Development exercise on the optimum way to minimise food waste in County Kilkenny, Ireland (in cooperation with Slovenian partners) & to create a social enterprise from the residue. Kilkenny LEADER Partnership (KLP) and 3County Energy Agency (3CEA) in collaboration with colleague LEADER ‘Local Action Groups’ (LAGs) in Slovenia propose developing a LEADER Cooperation Project in their respective territories to address the issue of how to best minimise food waste. They also want to explore the optimum environmentally method to deal with the remaining waste and its by-products to a social/ community enterprise benefit, such as the sale of renewable energy and soil enrichers.