Move over, landfills — food scraps give Massachusetts biogas

The state of Massachusetts is cracking down on food waste in a big way. Come Oct 1, any institution producing more than a ton of leftovers a week — think grocery stores, hotels, universities, nursing homes, and the like — won’t be able to send their discarded food to the landfill anymore. Their only options: donate any usable food, ship the remaining scraps to a composting facility or as farm animal feed, or turn the food waste into clean energy at an anaerobic digestion facility, where microbes in enclosed chambers break it down. The resulting biogas can then be used to create heat and electricity, or converted to compressed natural gas to fuel buses and trucks.

Some 1,700 business are set to be affected by the ban — part of the state’s ultimate plan to reduce its waste stream 30 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. NPR reports:

Read more: http://grist.org/news/move-over-landfills-food-scraps-give-massachusetts-biogas/

£30m food waste recycling facility to be built in Dagenham

The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has given planning consent to ReFood UK for its next major anaerobic digestion plant for food waste. The £30m plant will be the company’s third site in the UK and is part of a major programme of investment in ReFood’s food waste recycling facilities, which also includes a new site in Widnes, Cheshire, due to open in 2014.

The new facility on the London Sustainable Industries Park (LSIP) will take 160,000 tonnes of food waste which would otherwise go to landfill and create low carbon biogas (enough to supply around 10,000 homes), as well as liquid fertiliser.The facility will also create up to 60 new jobs in addition to some relocated jobs.

Philip Simpson, commercial director at ReFood, part of PDM Group, commented: “We are delighted to get the go ahead for this landmark plant which will help to ensure that food waste arising in the London area can be transformed into renewable energy and valuable nutrients to go back onto the land.

“The decision comes in the same week that we launched the Vision 2020: UK roadmap to zero food waste to landfill to achieve zero food waste to landfill by the end of the decade and having the right infrastructure in place to optimise the energy and nutritional value of food waste will have a major part to play in this ambition.

“There is clearly a desire within retail, the hospitality sector and householders to both prevent food waste and also deal with it more responsibly where it does arise. Indeed, we have been delighted by the positive response that the Vision 2020 ambition has already received.”

ReFood UK opened its first anaerobic digestion plant in Doncaster in 2011 and this has proved so successful there are already plans to double its size. A further £20m is being invested in the new gas-to-grid plant in Widnes, which will be able to take 90,000 tonnes of food waste.

LSIP at Dagenham Dock is creating the UK’s largest concentration of environmental industries and technologies bringing new life and opportunities to the borough. Developed on 60 acres of land owned by Greater London Authority, LSIP is at the heart of the London Mayor’s Green Enterprise District. The vision is to deliver a closed loop system, with businesses delivering waste to energy projects, combined heat and power schemes, recycling and reprocessing facilities, and renewable energy technologies. This system enables businesses to develop synergies with their neighbours, maximise resource efficiency and innovation and minimise waste.

Source: Prova PR

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UK ROADMAP TO ACHIEVE ZERO FOOD WASTE TO LANDFILL LAUNCHED

A major report which sets out to stop billions of pounds worth of food being consigned to landfill has been launched in London on November 11, 2013. The report, entitled ‘Vision 2020: UK Roadmap to Zero Food Waste to Landfill’ is the culmination of more than two years’ work and sets the framework to achieve a food waste-free future by 2020.

Its ambition is to:

• Save the UK economy over £17bn a year by 2020 through the reduction of food wasted by households, businesses and the public sector.

• Prevent 27m tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) a year from entering the atmosphere.

• Return over 1.3m tonnes a year of valuable nutrients to the soil.

• Generate over 1 terrawatt-hour (Twh) electricity a year, enough to power over 600,000 homes.

The report has been authored by ReFood, the UK’s foremost food waste recycler, in collaboration with BioRegional, an entrepreneurial charity that promotes sustainable businesses through its One Planet Living philosophy.

In order to achieve zero food waste to landfill by 2020, the report’s principal recommendations are:

• A clear timetable for the phased introduction of a ban on food waste to landfill to come into full force by 2020, allowing industry the time to finance and develop an optimum collection and processing infrastructure.

• Compulsory separate collections of food waste from homes and businesses, with an outcome that optimises its value to provide energy, nutrients for agriculture and, preferably, heat.

• Greater collaboration at every stage of the supply chain and between key stakeholders to accelerate the adoption of best practice, improve waste prevention and maximise the value of food waste as a resource.

• The integration of food waste education into school, college and professional training programmes and increased support for WRAP’s ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ initiative.

The report highlights where and why food waste is happening at each stage of the UK supply chain; what actions are being taken to tackle food waste in each sector and what more can be done in the future to drive the positive environmental, economic and social outcomes, for the greater good.

Philip Simpson, commercial director at ReFood, explained: “Our message is clear; food waste is a valuable resource that should never end up in landfill sites. Everyone from the food producer, through to the retailer, the restaurant and the householder can play their part in ensuring that we take full advantage of its considerable potential by ensuring we re-use, recycle and recover every nutrient and kilowatt of energy it has to offer.

“As the biggest contaminant in the waste stream, food waste consigns millions of tonnes and billions of pounds of valuable resources to landfill or incineration each year. Failure to take a cohesive approach to food waste could result in solutions that will consign valuable resources to incineration or landfill, potentially cause significant environmental damage and represent a lost opportunity to develop a more integrated infrastructure in the UK to reprocess and recycle all waste.

“We would like to see the government and industry take a more consistent and holistic approach to waste in the UK - one that maximises its potential as a resource.”

Sue Riddlestone, OBE, chief executive and co-founder of BioRegional added: “Achieving zero food waste to landfill within the next seven years is a big challenge and we will need the support and actions of individuals, businesses and the government if this vision is to be realised.

“However, the case for change is compelling. We will save billions of pounds. We will prevent millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases from entering our atmosphere. And crucially, we will ensure that food is treated as a precious resource.”

The Vision 2020 campaign was initiated in February 2011, when ReFood launched its report ‘Vision 2020: The future of the food waste recycling sector’, which first set out the ambition to eradicate food waste from landfill by the end of the decade.

Inspired by the debate that the first report generated, ReFood brought together key industry stakeholders including the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, The Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, the Institute of Hospitality, the Food Chain and Biomass Renewables Association, Unilever and the London Thames Gateway Development Partnership as the Vision 2020 Visionary Panel, chaired by former Secretary of State for the Environment Lord Deben, to help shape a viable roadmap to turn the vision into reality. The roadmap launched today is the culmination of that work.

To date, more than 100 organisations have already signed up to the Vision 2020 campaign. To find out more and to access the report visit www.vision2020.info

ReFood is the UK’s leading food waste recycler, and is part of PDM Group, which has a long tradition of providing quality services to each sector of the food supply chain. To find out more about ReFood’s food waste recycling and collection service visit www.refood.co.uk

BioRegional is an entrepreneurial charity which establishes sustainable businesses and works with partners around the world to demonstrate that a sustainable future can be easy, attractive and affordable, through an approach it calls One Planet Living. For more information about BioRegional visit www.bioregional.co.uk

Source: Prova PR

Full Disclosure Statement: The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this article.

This article is for your information only and the GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW does not (necessarily) approve, endorse or recommend the product, service, company or organization mentioned.

Sweden has run out of rubbish

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Due to Sweden’s innovative waste-to-energy program and highly efficient recycling habits, this Scandinavian nation faces an interesting dilemma. They have run out of trash.

The country’s waste management and recycling programs are second to none as only four percent of the nation’s waste ends up in landfills.

By contrast, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, over half of the waste produced by American households ends up in landfills and things are not better in Britain either. To add to that the fact that many things that are collected in kerbside recycling also end up in the same place as there are no means to recycle them, there is a glut in the market for recyclables or they are “contaminated” and thus cannot be (easily) recycled.

Because Sweden manages waste so effectively and then use what remains to partly power their country, they are now living an environmentalist’s dream; a shortage of garbage. Can you believe that?

However, the environmentalist in Britain demand that our waste be recycled and not burned and even that what, invariably, remains and cannot be recycled must be recycled say Friends of the Earth and other groups. Incineration must not be done, they say, and that despite the fact that Sweden shows the way how to do it.

In order to continue fueling the waste-to-energy factories that provide electricity to a quarter of a million homes and 20% of the entire country’s district heating, Sweden is now resorting to importing trash from the landfills of other European countries.

In fact, those countries are paying Sweden to do so. Yes, you read that correctly, countries are paying to get rid of a source of fuel they themselves produced so that Sweden can continue to have the energy output they need instead of using the waste for the same purposes at home. This is madness, if you ask me.

One does not have to be an economist to know that this is one highly enviable energy model and that, besides the economic benefit, the Swedish system of sustainability clearly has vast environmental benefits.

Apart from the traditional recycling programs that are being used, Sweden's waste-to-energy system ensures minimal environmental impact from the country’s waste and thus the country's extremely efficient circle of consumption, waste management, and energy output provides the current global population and coming generations inspiration and guidance towards a more sustainable future.

The United States and Britain could learn a great deal from Sweden and how they do things but, alas, it is in Britain the so-called environmentalists that actually block any attempts of doing this, e.g. production of energy from waste by burning it.

Rather Britain is playing with burning biomass in some power stations in the form of pellets which, in the main, have to be imported from as far afield as the USA and are, more often than not, made from virgin wood rather than waste wood. Or those power plants are fueled by biomass in the form of specially grown “crops” such as willow, eucalyptus, or miscanthus. Plants which use up land areas better used for the growing of food.

We must change and we must change now and follow models that work in other countries and implement them in order, in this case, to (one) have energy security and (two) reduce the waste going to landfill.

© 2013