Practical ways to support your business and your planet With special guest Donny Chien, Co Founder yWaste

Small Biz Matters – #184 Providing the small business community with educational content and advocacy since 2014
with Alexi Boyd, broadcaster, advocate and small business owner.
Date: 3 November 2020

As we hurtle towards the middle of the 21st century small businesses are becoming more and more environmentally conscious and good habits are beginning to emerge. Whether it be reducing our carbon footprint, investigating our supply chain, going paper free there are many strategies we can implement to reduce our impact not only as individuals but as business consumers.

But have you considered food waste and the relationship your small business has with this element? How do you and your staff consume it, source it and ultimately, dispose of it. Haven't thought about it yet? Well, considering food security is emerging as a major global issue, you might want to rethink that.

There are programs in place that you can access to reduce your small business’ food print. Here to share with us the mindset to rethink your small business’ relationship to waste, great practical strategies plus a little bit about the reality of the start up world is Donny Chien, the Founder of yWaste.

Welcome to the show Donny.

Topics we’ll be covering:

• Food waste & food security
  • What can small business do to reduce their food waste
  • The circular economy - through the vehicles of donations vs sales
  • Look at food as a resource rather than a commodity
  • Our changing relationship to food.
    • Who and when do we consider food to be waste?
    • The economics of food security

• Change in perspectives of consumers
  • What has changed - Changing behaviours, it’s making sense to the broader community, it’s no longer a trend or fad, it’s a bit more of a reality
  • Could this concept help you grow your business?
  • Building trust in the local community
  • Turn waste in customers- and environmentally value drivenlocal customers
  • Targeting the environmentally conscious consumer and how businesses can better address the “green” expectations

• yWaste’s start up story
  • Telling it like it is as opposed to the San Francisco Garage Startup Drea
  • Startup newbies - it’s not all warm and fuzzy - beware of engagements being personality driven, PR, “greenwashing”
  • It’s not just a dream - its very, very hard and requires a strong why and drive and patience
  • But, there’s lots of like-minded people to collaborate with - the collective moving in one direction

To find out more go to their website: https://ywasteapp.com/  

About our Guest:

Donny Chien is a long term Local Ku-ring-gai Resident( not sure if this is a founder), 2nd Generation Taiwanese Australian and co founder of YWaste. Y Waste was founded in 2017 as a way to help restaurants, takeaway shops and cafes across the country reduce food waste. “A third of food produced in retail goes in the bin simply because it’s unsold at the end of the day. That’s a lot of food being wasted, and being the son of Taiwanese immigrants, where his father lost his parents when he was four, and he suffered from food insecurity, so I grew up learning never to waste food. Ywaste is an crowd sourced App that serves a digital platform to effectively solve the first worlds dumbest problem in food waste and a response to his anti food waste values which as part of his upbringing by connecting those who have surplus unsold food to the local community of waste warriors and want to support the local businesses who support these values.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ywaste.com.ywaste&hl=en (Android)

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ywaste-reduce-food-waste/id1265599631?mt=8 (iOS)

https://m.facebook.com/ywasteAU/

Instagram ywasteau