Ryan Nicholls' Waste-Away turns food scraps into fertiliser ... and no one has to carry them out to the bins. Photo / Greg Bowker
Ryan Nicholls' Waste-Away turns food scraps into fertiliser ... and no one has to carry them out to the bins. Photo / Greg Bowker
KEY POINTS:
Taking the family food scraps out to the composting bin was just about Ryan Nicholls' least-favourite chore ... so he invented a way to get out of it.
Now the scraps go to the bin automatically, and Ryan has become probably New Zealand's youngest patent applicant.
The 9-year-oldfrom Glenfield thought there had to be a better way of getting rid of the scraps - one that would eliminate his role in the task.
"I was completely sick of it," he said.
So he came up with a system that chopped the scraps in the waste grinder attached to the kitchen sink, flushed them down a pipe with water, separated the liquid and the solids and fed the solids to a compost unit below the kitchen window.
Ryan used the water from the waste disposal unit to turn a wheel that spins the separator and collector drum.
He knows his invention needs a bit of fine-tuning, but his patent application for the eco-friendly unit has been accepted by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand.
Ryan's invention, christened the Waste-Away, won the $10,000 patent prize package from patent attorney firm A.J. Park and the Icehouse Business Incubator in this year's series of the television show Let's Get Inventin' .
Technical expert Chris Chitty, from the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology at Massey University, worked with Ryan to turn his concept into a marketable product.
"My job was to work with Ryan's inventive imagination and add some practical know-how," said Mr Chitty.
Anton Blijlevens, a partner at A.J. Park, said that as far as he knew, Ryan was the youngest inventor to have a patent application accepted in New Zealand.
Mr Blijlevens said the patentable aspect of the system was its innovative use of water.
"The gravity of the water powers a turbine which turns the drum that collects and dries the compost in a self-sufficient system."
Ryan said he hoped to make "a little" money from the invention and he planned to look out for other ideas to patent.
