Enhancing Composting and Sustainability Awareness: Q&A with Frezit Labs, Damion Wongsang

Damion Wongsang, Jamaican-born and Brooklyn trained, is a born go-getter. From opening a brick-and-mortar clothing shop, to trying his hand at a tourism summit, this serial entrepreneur is short of neither ideas nor the guts to implement these ideas and see them through.

While running a digital creative company, Wongsang Worldwide, Damion begun working on an sustainability device which allows gardeners to freeze their raw food waste in an odor free manor and use it later as organic compost. This appliance is call "Frezit."

In this weeks Q&A, Damion discusses the process and hurdles of designing and prototyping a physical product. Enjoy!

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Wait, what!?!?! You free garbage?! How does this work? Walk us through that process a little bit.

Frezit Lab designs a smart disposal unit for the composting community who needs to contain organic waste for long periods of time.

Currently [customers] are frustrated with the lack of solutions. We provide a compact disposal unit, that neutralizes organics waste (compost) by freezing it below room temperature. Frezit is unlike storing organic waste in your refrigerator drop bin, composting bags and oversize eco digester, which don’t solve the problem of odor and long term storage of organic waste.

We offer a simple solution freeze your organic waste in our disposal unit.

In terms of product development, how are along are you and what are the next steps?

We have completed the protoype at moment. It took 2 years of R & D for the current model and maybe another 7 months to refine the current model.

Who do you envision benefiting the most from this product? And where would you love to see this product in 5 years.

The product is really an Alpha invention Internet of Thing ( IOT) that will help the world contribute to sustainable energy sources. If more individuals homes have Frezit units in their homes. then less organic waste end up in the landfills .

That means more sustainability is being created by each household, causing a ripple affect through for cities looking to operate on zero waste philosophy like the city of San Francisco

How'd you get into all of this? You have a design background, an engineering background or are you just a regular guy with a crazy idea?

I have fashion background which spans from design, manufacturing and sourcing. Those are [some of] the key components of engineering a product. Some key questions to ask when considering what kind of product are you looking to design are: - How will it be made? - Where are you getting the materials from? - Who is going to buy it.?

If you understand all three elements you can produce anything

What big social problems do you see this product solving in the next few years?

The big problem is getting everyone, old and young, to adapt to this new technology. A product like this can save new city 150 million a year in waste management fees

What are one or two apps/products that you've recently come to love- these are apps that make your life more pleasant or enhance your work flow.

I like Evernote because it so practical. And Podio for managing company operations, from onboarding new accounts to day-to-day communication.

Any plans on developing software which will work with the hardware? If so, what could that look like.

We are developing an android app for Frezit and an ios app as well. The app will have basic functionality that provides information on how much waste is going out and creates data points of the how many households are composting to help smart cities with a better solution for organic waste.

Any advice for any one in our audience with an idea that's difficult and unconventional?

I have heard [investors] often tell entreprenuers don't think of problem to solve: [Instead] Live your life and think the things you do day-to-day and what kind of solution you can create for the problems your having.

I love drinking a fresh glass of juice in the morning and it create allot of pulp. For some reason it didn't feel right throwing away all this pulp into the garbage. There was already a solution: the green market. But the market was only open on the weekends and sometimes I didn't have time to juice on the weekend. so storing the waste in my freezer was the only solution. My freezer was overwhelmed with all this organic waste and that 's when i realized I need to invent a solution.

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Damion Wongsang is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Freezit. You can follow him on Twitter @WongsangWorldWi

Medvis Jackson is a web designer at Hindsite, curator at Kulchah and avid cricket fan. You can follow him @medvisjackson for his random thoughts.

#ideasinfocus