Ban food waste from landfill for renewable energy, urges thinktank

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

The government should ban all food leftovers from landfill by the end of the decade to boost technology which can turn it into energy, a study from thinktank CentreForum suggested on Tuesday.

Councils should be given financial support to help them bring in separate food waste collections for households and businesses to ensure a steady supply of organic waste for anaerobic digestion, a renewable power source.

The process could create enough biogas from green waste and purpose-grown crops to power more than 2.5m UK homes by 2020, the report said.

But barriers to increasing energy from anaerobic digestion need to be removed if the technology is to be scaled up significantly from current levels where it produces enough energy to power 300,000 homes, the report found.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/03/ban-food-waste-landfill

[jtuck004]

1. We already invented compost. Eat your broccoli, there's the energy. n/t

[Lionessa]

2. Dumb question perhaps, but

wouldn't it be more sensible (albeit grosser) to use the organic waste collections systems we already have in place? The sewage systems.

[jerseyjack]

4. No. It would require more bacteria added to the sewage system. Also.

Bio-solids (residue from sewage) has limited application because it contains contaminants such as mercury. Better to compost it separately so it can be land applied.

BUT it is difficult to compost meat products.

Company I work for collects bakery wast and it gets recycled into chicken feed. We used to operate a pig farm where the food waste from cafeterias and restaurants was sterilized by boiling for two hours. Then it cooled for two more hours and was fed to swine.

The meat from the pigs is tastier than a factory farmed hog and our animals had a better life than being confined into pens.

[slackmaster]

3. I've been composting most of my food waste for about 25 years

It's very easy to do. It's amazing how quickly food scraps disappear in an active compost.

[wordpix]

9. how do you do that in an apt. on the 10th floor? I send it to the POTW

[kestrel91316]

5. Most my food waste goes down the garbage disposal, through the plumbing drainpipe,

into the sewer line, to the waste treatment plant, then the biosolids go into one of the giant digesters where it anaerobically decomposes, producing methane gas, which is used at the electric power generation station right nextdoor to the treatment plant.

Our sewer biosolids have been producing electricity in Los Angeles for nearly 60 years. One more reason everybody hates us, I suppose........

[hunter]

6. We compost our food waste.

We're not vegetarians, but we don't use much meat. There's never meaty foods left over that the dogs don't get.

I grew up in a household with a compost heap.

Even when we lived in an apartment my wife and I kept houseplants and compost.

Here's something I found using google:

http://lifeonthebalcony.com/composting-on-the-balcony-the-easy-way-to-environmental-virtue

[xtraxritical]

7. I just bury food waste (not meat) in a spot I keep moist and worms do all the work.

[4th law of robotics]

8. City composting to be used in city gardens

to lessen the demand on imported food.

It wouldn't produce any energy but it would cut down on some needed to ship in fresh produce.

Just a thought.

/generally it's easier to reduce consumption rather than increase production.