A five-star hotel is not where most people expect to find maggots. Yet beneath the polished marble lobby of the Hyatt Regency near Sydney's Darling Harbour, hundreds of thousands of black soldier fly larvae are hard at work, consuming around half a tonne of food waste every day.
The larvae live inside a high-tech unit about the size of a shipping container, discreetly housed in the hotel's loading dock. Food waste from the hotel's kitchens including orange peels, watermelon rinds and other non-consumable scraps are fed to the insects at timed intervals by automated systems and robotics.
"We generate on average about 500 kilograms of food waste per day," says Jane Lyons, General Manager of Hyatt Regency Sydney.
"There were concerns at the beginning about smell or flies or maggots, but there's none of that. It's all tightly contained."
The technology was developed by Goterra, founded by Olympia Yarger. Since the first unit was commissioned in 2020, the system has expanded to 12 sites nationwide, including Melbourne Airport and Brisbane's Howard Smith Wharves.
Insects as infrastructure
At its core, the system works like an inverted feedlot. Instead of transporting feed to animals in rural areas, waste is processed where it's created, inside cities.
"You can sit it underneath a hotel or you can sit it on a landfill. The waste is the input, and the output is high-value protein," Olympia explains.
Black soldier fly larvae are uniquely suited to the task. Unlike houseflies, they don't spread disease or bite and they are exceptionally efficient at converting organic waste into protein. Research funded by AgriFutures Australia found the larvae contain up to 50% protein and 30% healthy oils.
Once harvested, larvae from the Hyatt are sent to Hilltop's Free Range Farm, where they're fed to chickens that lay the eggs served back at the hotel. The only by-product of the system, nutrient-rich insect frass, is being trialled as fertiliser on a vineyard that supplies the hotel's wine.
"It's a true circular economy," Jane says.
"Our guests love hearing that the eggs they're eating come from chickens fed on food waste from the hotel."
Scaling an uncomfortable idea
Despite its approach, insect farming hasn't been easy to commercialise. Olympia describes the challenge of building technology for a "climate-constrained world" that many investors were reluctant to acknowledge.
"Waste and agriculture are considered slow, low-tech industries," she says.
"Add to that being a solo female founder, and raising capital is incredibly hard."
As a result, Goterra moved rapidly from research into commercial deployment to prove the model worked.
On the other side of the country, marine scientist Luke Wheat has followed a similar path. After years working in environmental consulting, he founded Arvela in 2014 to explore how insects could deliver sustainability outcomes at scale.
"Insects have been doing this work for millions of years," Luke says.
"They're a critical part of ecosystems. We're just learning how to harness that."
A new model of collaboration
Rather than competing, Arvela and Goterra now collaborate. Arvela specialises in breeding black soldier flies, supplying eggs and early-stage larvae to other companies.
"We realised one of the biggest bottlenecks was breeding capacity, so we focused solely on that," Luke explains.
Mass rearing insects, however, is far from simple. Different waste streams affect product quality and each life stage from egg, larva, pupa and fly requires precise climate and nutrition control.
"It's not like backyard chickens. Theres's a lot of husbandry and moving parts. It's complex, but exciting," Luke says.
Feeding the Future
Globally, the insect market is expected to exceed $6 billion by 2032 and Australia's industry, while about a decade behind Europe and North America, may benefit from learning those early lessons. AgriFutures Australia has invested in a $2 million five-year research program to accelerate the growth of the emerging Australian insect industry.
"There's now more collaboration. The first wave did the hard lifting. Now the second and third-wave companies can be more strategic," Luke says.
More than a dozen insect farming businesses now operate in Australia, producing black soldier fly larvae, mealworms and crickets. While insects are already widely eaten in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Western markets remain hesitant.
"That's a culture jump, not a science jump," Luke says.
"We hate flies as a sport in Australia. Convincing people to eat them is another story."
For now, black soldier fly larvae are reserved for animal feed and fertiliser, helping Australia reduce reliance on imported feed ingredients.
"Manage the waste, make the protein. That's the job," Olympia says.
It may sound simple, but for an industry turning food waste into climate solutions, protein and fertiliser, it's proving to be one of the most promising ideas Australia has to offer.
