Ryan Nicholls' Waste-Away turns food scraps into fertiliser ... and no one has to carry them out to the bins. Photo / Greg Bowker
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-old
from 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.
"This won't be the only thing I invent."
