Tiny worms making a big impact for our environment

When Jocelyn Molyneux was in grade 5, she dressed up as a Blue Box for Halloween. “I think that deeply impacted my career aspirations,” says Molyneux, with a chuckle.

Her continued passion for the planet led Molyneux to earn her master’s degree in environmental science and management at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2011. Two years later, Molyneux founded Wastenot Farms, a regenerative agriculture company transforming organic waste into natural soil additives. Her initial inspiration for the company came while working for a large waste management company while finishing her degree.

“I was really excited to be working for a recycling company and making an impact. But I found out that it was all smoke and mirrors,” she recalls. “Their waste was going to the landfill, because that was the cheapest option.”

Molyneux knew there was value in food waste, however, and had experience with using worms with her own backyard composter. “I knew that these composting worms could transform food waste into soil that grows nutrient-dense food. So that inspired me to set out and build a business.”

After winning entry to the TMU Social Ventures Zone through a Dragon’s Den-style competition at the Canadian National Exhibition called the “Innovation Garage,” Molyneux incubated her company there for two years. “It was hugely valuable,” she says. “I was so impressed with the quality of the programs there, the connection to mentorship, the space they provided in the city to work and the connection with other social entrepreneurs.” She found it helpful to share ups and downs with other initiatives that were also facing the challenge of the “triple bottom line” – social, environmental and financial.

In its early years, Wastenot covered a largely untapped business-to-business market – providing a compost collection service for about 50 companies, including the downtown Toronto offices of Instacart and CIBC. Then the COVID-19 lockdown hit in March 2020.

“In the span of about an eight-hour workday, we lost over $100,000 in recurring revenue contracts,” she recalls. And because offices were shut down, Wastenot also lost its food waste, used to feed their worms. “So it was a double whammy.”

After a six-month regroup, Molyneux decided to pivot to a consumer-focused business – a soil manufacturing company – and her timing couldn’t have been better. “During and after lockdown, the gardening market went through the roof, because everyone was stuck at home,” she says.

To produce the new microbe-rich products – under the brand name Jocelyn’s Soil Booster – Wastenot sources local food waste as feedstock for millions of red wiggler worms, which are housed in a 2,000-square-foot straw-bale barn in Hockley Valley. For three months, the worms eat, digest multiple times and create manure. This process has kept more than 150,000 pounds of organic waste out of landfills, helping to prevent the creation of methane gas, which is hazardous to the environment.

“We basically restarted a new business based around the ability to transform low-value waste materials into high-value growing amendments that naturally restore the ecosystem in soil that is degraded, or has been treated with chemicals in the past,” explains Molyneux. “Soil that is full of healthy microbial life sequesters more carbon than dead, chemically treated dirt,” so Molyneux’s soil gives consumers a way to help reduce carbon emissions.

The company donates 10 per cent of the worm manure they make to community gardens, and to their organic material suppliers like restaurants, coffee shops and breweries. “Completing the cycle,” she says.

What’s next for Wastenot? To scale the business by bringing on investors and building a commercial scale facility to accommodate their newest product – a raw, peat-free, regenerative potting soil, the first in Canada. “It allows growers to use biology instead of chemicals to grow their plants,” says Molyneux.

Molyneux is hopeful for the future of her business – and the planet. “The most rewarding thing about my business is that I get to educate and empower ordinary citizens around the value of healthy soil and the opportunity it provides as a solution to the climate crisis.”

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