Kompostri · Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Turning food waste into climate action.
Every household produces it. Returned to the ground instead of sent to landfill, it rebuilds soil — and soil is where greener, cooler, more resilient communities start.
(01) Why Kompostri started
A forgotten patch of ground.
For about twenty years the ground behind our house sat unused — hard, and full of construction rubble left over from when the housing was built. Nothing was being grown there. It was simply the part of the garden nobody touched.
During Malaysia's 2020 lockdown we began bokashi composting the household's food scraps, and needed somewhere to bury the fermented material. So we dug into that hard ground, pulled out the rocks and rubble, and made a burial area.
We kept returning fermented food scraps to it. Over time the ground changed. It became soil that could hold and feed plants — and it produced roselle and other edible crops, with no chemical fertiliser and no pesticides.
If food waste could transform this small patch of forgotten ground, what could it do at community scale?
Grown in soil built from household food waste. Nine crops from the same patch of ground, with no chemical fertiliser and no pesticides.
Roselle · Turmeric · Cabbage · Guava · Brinjal · Winged bean (kacang kelisa) · Spring onion · Torch ginger (bunga kantan) · Pandan — all grown in soil built from household food waste.
(02) Why this matters
Food is the single largest thing Malaysia throws away.
And when it rots in a landfill without oxygen, it stops being food waste and starts being a climate problem.
tonnes of food waste a day in Malaysia. Food is the single largest component of the country's rubbish — 40.03% of the 36,900 tonnes of solid waste generated daily.
Food loss and waste generate roughly a tenth of the world's greenhouse gases — close to five times the emissions of aviation. Were it a nation, it would rank behind only China and the United States.
What happens now
What if it never became waste?
We see food waste not as the end of the story, but as the beginning of climate action.
Malaysian figures: SWCorp, reported June 2026 — food waste is 40.03% of 36,900 tonnes of daily solid waste. Under the 13th Malaysia Plan, landfill reliance is targeted to fall from 61% to 52% by 2030, with composting named as an instrument. Global share of emissions: UNEP / IPCC 2019, reported by UNFCCC 2024. Third-largest-emitter comparison: FAO framing, cited by WRAP, 2024. Rotting food in landfill contributes up to 14% of global methane emissions (UNEP).
(03) How Kompostri closes the loop
Compost is not the destination. Regeneration is.
Bokashi is our entry point, not our endpoint. Food waste is diverted, fermented and returned to the ground; the soil that results supports planting, gardens and trees. Growing plants take carbon dioxide out of the air and hold carbon in wood, leaves and soil, which is why greening is a genuine part of climate action rather than a decorative last step. Every stage is designed to be counted.
Swipe to follow the loop
Kompostri exists to turn everyday waste into community-powered climate action.
Trees and vegetation act as nature-based carbon sinks as they grow. Kompostri does not claim verified carbon sequestration or carbon credits, and planting alone does not solve climate change; it is one part of a wider set of solutions.
(04) What Kompostri does
Three things, in this order: get people taking part, turn what they divert into something that regenerates, and make the result visible.
Participate
Community climate action
Make food-waste reduction something households, students and organisations can physically take part in — not read about.
- hands-on composting
- community activation
- sustainability education
Regenerate
Waste to resource
Turn organic waste into something that rebuilds soil and supports planting, gardens, urban greening and trees.
- food-waste diversion
- soil regeneration
- planting & greening
Measure
Impact visibility
Track participation, diversion and environmental outcomes so that what a community creates becomes visible and reportable.
- participation data
- diversion tracking
- impact reporting
Workshops are a method, not the business. A session is how participation starts; the loop that follows it is the work.
(05) What we have tested and learned
One month. Four households. Real behaviour, real learning.
Across four pilot households, in roughly one month.
September to October 2025. Weighed on a household scale, net of bin and lid, and self-recorded by participants.
Four Klang Valley households — a terrace house, an apartment and a kampung-style lot — took the kit into their own kitchens.
Once my bin was full, whenever I saw food waste being thrown away, I thought, "Aww, this is all going to waste!" I actually started thinking of getting a second bin.Rafidah
Kompostri household pilot participant, Sept–Oct 2025
Easy to fold into an existing kitchen routine — cut, compress, sprinkle, close.
Food waste diverted by Rafidah's household during the pilot.
Scraps stopped reading as rubbish and started reading as a resource.
Onboarding must be clearer on drainage, tap closure and compression.
Why the friction matters. On her first attempt to drain the liquid, the tap was not fully closed and the leak caused a strong odour; there was also mild odour when the bin was very full. Once the closure was understood, the problem eased. We are treating this as a product requirement rather than a complaint: clearer onboarding on drainage, tap closure, compression and odour prevention before any community-scale rollout.
These insights come from one participant within the four-household pilot and are not presented as representative of every household.
(06) Why we believe there is momentum
Attention arrived before the programme did.
National media covered the idea, and people asked to join a community that did not exist yet. We are treating that as interest to be earned, not impact to be claimed.
Media attention
Malaysian National News Agency
BERNAMA, Malaysia's national news agency · Business desk · 24 March 2026. Published in English and Malay.
National daily · Bisnes / Usahawan
Berita Harian · Bisnes / Usahawan · March 2026. Malay-language coverage of the same feature, extending reach to a national Malay readership.
Partnership pipeline
Universities and organisations have approached Kompostri to explore future composting, sustainability and community climate-action programmes. These are pipeline opportunities. No community or campus programme has been delivered yet, and nothing here is presented as a confirmed partnership.
Organic community interest
Threads · organic post,no paid promotion
A single Threads post announcing she was starting a green community around food waste, composting and tree planting — and inviting people to join her.
People expressing interest in taking part. They are not programme participants or beneficiaries, and no programme existed for them to join.
Founder learning applied across ventures
Kompostri independently applies relevant venture-building lessons gained by its founder through participation in SEEd.Lab on a separate social enterprise — problem framing, customer discovery, experimentation and early-stage validation.
Kompostri is not a SEEd.Lab venture. It is not incubated, funded, advised or endorsed by SEEd.Lab.
(07) What we want to build with communities
The same loop, run by a neighbourhood instead of a kitchen.
We have tested the first four stages in households. What we want to build next is a replicable community programme that carries them through to planting and measurement — designed so that a school, a residents' association or an urban community can run it, and so that a second community can run it after that.
Participants connect food waste to climate change.
Tested at household scaleHouseholds separate food scraps from general waste.
Tested at household scaleOrganic waste is fermented into a usable resource.
Tested at household scaleThe resource is returned to soil.
Tested at household scaleCommunities plant gardens, trees and green space.
To be pilotedParticipation, diversion and outcomes become visible.
To be pilotedAlready tested. Household behaviour, diversion measurement, the kit itself, and the friction points that need fixing first.
To be piloted. Group participation over time, shared burial and planting ground, community-scale measurement, and whether a neighbourhood sustains the habit after the launch event.
(08) The Kompostri ecosystem
Climate action takes an ecosystem.
No single organisation closes this loop. Kompostri's role is to connect the people who produce food waste with the partners who can process it, the ground that needs it and the institutions that can verify what changed.
Swipe to see the whole map
Climate action people can actually take part in.
An abstract global problem becomes a specific action someone takes in their own kitchen, every day.
Waste becomes a resource.
Food waste can contribute to healthier soil, planting and greener communities instead of filling a landfill.
Impact you can see.
Participation and environmental outcomes can be tracked, so communities and funders can see what their action created.
(09) Who we work with
The groups Kompostri is built to work with.
Communities, households, schools and universities are our entry point — that is where Kompostri is starting, and where the household pilot ran. Everyone else here is part of the same loop rather than a lower priority, and we want to build with all of them. Each card says plainly where that relationship stands today.
Communities & households
Households, youth, volunteers
Where every programme starts and where the behaviour data comes from. Four Klang Valley households ran the kit in their own kitchens and diverted 27.55 kg in about a month.
Schools & universities
Education, students, research
Hands-on sustainability learning rather than a classroom topic — students taking part in diversion, composting and planting. Universities have approached us to explore this.
Businesses & food-waste producers
F&B retail, restaurants, hotels, factories
Commercial kitchens and production lines generate organic waste at a scale no household reaches. Diverting it where it is produced is where the volume in this loop sits.
Local authorities
Activation, diversion
The route to running this at neighbourhood scale — activating residents and diverting food waste away from landfill in a defined area.
Greening partners
Nurseries, planting, care
Regenerated soil only becomes climate action once something grows in it. Planting and long-term care are the stages we have not piloted yet.
Waste & logistics
Collection, processing
Moving fermented material from many kitchens to shared burial and planting ground is the practical problem between a household habit and a community programme.
Corporates & funders
CSR / ESG, sponsorship
Support community climate-action pilots, regeneration and impact measurement — and employee participation in something physical rather than a donation line.
Research & impact
Methodology, evaluation
Kompostri measures participation and diversion, not carbon credits. Independent methodology and evaluation are what would make those numbers verifiable.
(10) Who is building this
Ellyna Merican
Founder
Started Kompostri from her own kitchen in 2020, after burying fermented food scraps in a patch of ground that had been unused for twenty years and watching it turn into soil that could grow food.
Holds an MBA from Cardiff Metropolitan University and worked in human resources and marketing — including in a family-run food business and in event management — before turning that experience toward building Kompostri. The pilot was funded from personal savings.
Small team. Open invitation.
Kompostri is run by one person today, with informal help on logistics — and that has been a strength. It means the method is simple enough for one household to run, the evidence is first-hand, and every number on this page is one we can stand behind.
The next chapter is not about growing headcount. It is about putting this into the hands of communities, campuses and partners who want to run it themselves — and building the ecosystem that lets them. Kompostri is designed to be handed over, not held onto.
That is what the invitation below is for.
(11) Partner · Fund · Implement
Let's turn waste into something worth growing.
Kompostri is early, and deliberately honest about what has been tested and what has not. If you want to build the next part with us, this is the moment to talk.
Pilot a community, university or organisational programme with Kompostri.
Support community climate-action pilots, regeneration and impact measurement.
Work with us on composting, logistics, planting, research or delivery.