BiocharKool · Designing productive symbioses
Waste is just a resource in the wrong place.
We design local loops in which a territory’s organic residues become food, fertiliser, heat and living soil again, in the right order.
The problem: we process waste too low
Composting edible peelings, sending fresh manure to a biogas digester, burning wood to cook: each time, we destroy nutritional value that took energy, water and labour to produce.
Waste should be transformed at the highest nutritional level possible, and only what can no longer feed anything moves down to the next level.
This hierarchy was formalised by Paul Olivier, who has worked for many years with smallholder farmers in Vietnam and Laos. BiocharKool applies it and adapts it to local territories.
The 4 levels of organic waste transformation
Ranked by decreasing nutritional value.
What can still be eaten
Kitchen leftovers, unsold and damaged produce from supermarkets, brewers’ spent grain, by-products from fishing and slaughterhouses.
→ Animal feed (cooked, fermented). No compost, no biogas.Manure and excreta
Fresh manure and droppings, human excreta collected in dry toilets.
→ Black soldier fly larvae and earthworms, which feed poultry and fish. The rest becomes vermicompost.Inedible green waste
Grass clippings, leaves, toxic plants, urine-soaked bedding.
→ Compost. If it were edible, it would belong to level 1.Brown and woody waste
Husks, shells, fruit stones, vine prunings, forestry residues, brush and woody invasive plants: whatever does not compost well.
→ Clean heat and biochar, through gasification or pyrolysis.Level 4 closes the loop
Biochar is not an end in itself. Added to the fermented feed of level 1, it passes into the manure of level 2, is enriched in the bedding and compost of level 3, then ends up in the soil, charged with nutrients and microorganisms.
Woody biomass → biochar → feed and bedding → compost → soil → plants → animals and people
The carbon stays in the soil for centuries. Learn more about biochar →
Earth, one of the four elements
Biochar touches all four elements: it is born from fire (pyrolysis), it filters air and water, and it feeds the earth. These four elements are also the basic needs of every human activity, and a community that masters them locally stays standing when everything else wavers.
Fire
Heating, cooking, drying, processing. With residues rather than forest wood or fossil fuels.
Air
Filtering air and biogas, preserving food.
Water
The most vital: without water, we die in three days. Filtering it, washing, irrigating, harvesting rain and moisture from the air, and even producing energy from it (water wheel, waves, hydraulic ram pump).
Earth
Giving back to the soil what was taken from it, and storing carbon there for centuries. This is where BiocharKool begins.
Robust rather than high-performing
A system optimised for a single goal breaks at the first shock. We aim for robustness, in the sense used by biologist Olivier Hamant: simple, redundant loops that can be repaired on site and keep working when energy, prices or the climate fluctuate.
In practice: low-tech that you build and repair yourself, local materials, and little dependence on distant inputs.
Open to spread, refined for industry
The first goal: that as many people as possible take ownership of these regenerative models and replicate them, quickly and simply. Two paths complement each other.
The open version
Low-tech, buildable with common tools, repairable without a specialist. Plans, protocols and measurements shared freely, for farms, community spaces, municipalities and individuals.
The industrial version
For local authorities and industry that need throughput, automation or certification: more advanced equipment, protected and offered under licence. It funds research and the open version.
BiocharKool is being built as a worker cooperative (SCOP): profits serve the project and the people who do the work, not outside shareholders.
What BiocharKool does
Map
Identify the organic flows a territory loses, and their real level.
Design
Draw the loops and size the equipment: material balances, energy, costs.
Build and share
Support construction, measure in kilos, kWh and euros, publish the plans so others can replicate.
This site does not sell biochar. It presents an open method for anyone who wants to apply it where they live.
Who it is for
Local authorities and river basin agencies, farms and market gardeners, brewers and food businesses, community spaces and housing co-ops: anyone who pays today to get rid of what could feed them.