NÃM
NÃM collects discarded coffee waste in the city of Lisbon to produce fresh edible Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) and organic fertilizer. To maximize their impact, NÃM also offers kits for home culture growing, as well as workshops to raise awareness of this innovative technique and increase urban resilience.
NÃM‘s initiative started from a challenging observation: our current way of producing and creating value is not sustainable. We are destroying our unique home. But it also started from a dream; what if, instead of asking Nature to produce like our factories, we ask our factories to produce like Nature?
Therefore, we need to change the way we design and think of our economy! The business models of the future have to be inspired from Nature: Nature is non-linear; waste does not exist; resources are sourced locally; the output of one becomes the input for the other, and one process generates multiple benefits.
We also need new business models capable of joining social impact and financial sustainability.
NÃM has a very simple, yet powerful, business model, because waste is non-existant. Resources are sourced locally from what people regard as “waste”; coffee waste becomes the input and generates multiple benefits, such as mushrooms, CO2 reduction, fertiliser, home growing kits and inspiration for impact).
