About

PLUVR

PLU· VR | \ PLUH-VER \

Our take on the name of the Egyptian Plover bird, also known as the ‘crocodile bird’. The Plover has a symbiotic relationship with Nile Crocodiles, hopping in crocodile mouths to eat the gunk in between their teeth, providing food for the birds and squeaky-clean teeth for the crocs. We think of city food waste as the croc and ourselves as the Plover bird. Perfect symbiosis.

Be in charge

In the age of climate change, one of the most responsible things you can do is to compost your organic waste, upcycling it into organic and sustainable soils. Over 40% of city waste is organic. Not only does this crowd landfills but it creates methane, a greenhouse gas 20 TIMES more dangerous for our planet than CO2 - not very appetizing right?

Team up with Pluvr to keep organics where they belong - in the soil. Using modern techniques and cutting-edge technology, Pluvr safely and elegantly turns organic residuals into premium soil amendments, building healthy soils for tomorrow. With each purchase you become an environmental steward, returning food residuals to the soil, diverting those foods from landfills and closing the food loop. Your plants will thank you for their superior food as will future generations for making their future sustainable today.

Close The Loop

Pluvr collects organic leftovers from restaurants and processes that material at its state-of-the-art facility. Once on site, food leftovers are blended with leaves to make a premium compost mix, rich in beneficial nutrients, bacteria, and fungi. The organic mix is then ‘hot’ composted in an in-vessel composter for a week, killing pathogens and weed seeds. Next, the compost is fed to red wiggler earthworms that consume the material, secreting their ‘castings’ as they go. These castings, or worm manure known as ‘vermicompost’, are the real MAGIC, supercharging the compost with beneficial biology. This boosts plant yields by up to 20 percent, generates earlier flowering, and increases soil biology, structure, and water-retention capacity.

Our Founder

PLUVR founder Max van Praag grew up in the nation’s capital to a Swiss mother and English father, both of whom worked at the World Bank to change the world for the better; an ethos they instilled in Max.

During the summer break, when his parents were working, Max was sent to the English countryside to stay with his aunt, an avid gardener who grew all the produce enjoyed at every meal. To earn his keep, Max’s aunt, Josephine, taught him how to compost leftovers, transforming ‘waste’ into rich organic soil from which future meals were grown.

When Max’s mother suddenly passed away, he moved the family house. At this moment, Max became aware of the huge amounts of ‘waste’ generated by cities as more and more waste piled up in the roll-off dumpster outside his house, including the contents of the kitchen fridge. Naturally, Max became interested in where all of these things ended up and followed the trash trucks that collected the roll-offs; first to the transfer station in DC and then to the landfills in Virginia. Seeing this made Max question how we urban dwellers dispose of our food scraps, prompting his quest for a better, more sustainable solution.

PLUVR is the result of Max’s ‘lightbulb moment’ - to bring the natural sensibility of the countryside to the city by diverting food waste from landfills and composting the nutrient-rich materials into premium organic soils.