Not So Fast, Fido — Those Food Scraps Have Other Plans
Posted on August 26, 2009 by
Remember when you were a kid, and you’d get in trouble for not eating all of your dinner because your mom said there were starving children in Africa who would love to have that food? Well, all you moms out there can relax a little about uneaten leftovers — food scraps are getting new life as energy.
In the San Francisco Bay area, 2,300 restaurants and grocery stores are participating in a program provided by the East Bay Municipal Utility District in which food scraps are converted into energy for the area. Here’s how it works: The restaurants and grocery stores separate food scraps from other waste and send them to a wastewater treatment plant in Oakland. The food is sent through a “juicer” that separates out any unwanted non-food waste that may have gotten in there, such as plastic wrappers or silverware. Once filtered, the food is put into giant tanks full of microbes that speed up the decomposition process. As the food breaks down, it releases methane, and the methane is harnessed and piped into generators. Then the gas is converted into energy. The extra food is then composted.
Currently about 100 tons of food are processed per week through this program, but the program hopes to double its capacity by the end of 2010, aiming to process 100 tons of food per day. If that goal is reached, one megawatt of energy that came directly from food scraps can be sold to the grid — enough to power 1,300 homes.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about energy from following environmental current events, it’s that there is no magic bullet — in order to fully serve our society, renewable energy is going to have to come from several different sources. Converting food scraps is not only effective in terms of renewable energy; it also keeps tons of waste out of our landfills. Partnered with solar energy, wind energy, and the dozens of other renewable sources currently being explored, this could be a huge step in the right direction if more communities adopted this system.
What do you think of converting food scraps to energy?
I have to wonder if a composting program would be more beneficial in the long run – keeping chemical fertilizers out of our food? 1300 home doesn’t seem like a lot but I guess even small steps help and they DO get to compost, too. Plus, ther’s the reduction of waste in landfills.
the problem that I have with inventive ways to make use of waste is that it lets people of the hook with regard to waste reduction. There is no way that the energy generated from the excess fries that some joint put on your plate (to outdo the next place down the street)will even approach the energy that went into growing, harvesting, processing, transporting and cooking them. Restaurant waste is rampant because they put too much on your plate. The consumer bears some responsibility as well. Wasting food is considered cool in some demographics. I hate to waste food and I hardly ever do.