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Growing awareness: food waste needs a home
Anaerobic digestion systems, like this one that BEP helped bring online in Exeter, Maine, will increasingly become a more rational disposal solution for food waste.
Two recent news articles are helpful in advancing the notion that disposing of food waste as we always have is just foolish. It no longer needs to be in the traditional waste stream.
The Portland Daily Sun’s article, “ECOMAINE TO STUDY ORGANIC WASTE RECYCLING,” details an effort by the mayor in Portland, Maine, to handle food waste more responsibly. During the last school year in that city, volunteers and staff coached students to separate food scraps from recyclables and from regular trash. Custodial staff would then bring separated waste streams to a loading area, and the food waste would then go to a composting facility.
Of course composting is one solution, but so is anaerobic digestion. FROM OHIO COMES THE NEWS that Ohio State University will be offering formal training for operators of anaerobic digestion systems. According to the university’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, as the anaerobic digestion industry continues its vigorous growth, “training must be available for the workforce, including AD operators, regulatory personnel who will oversee permitting and operations, and investors who will provide funding.”
Expect to see a lot more about food waste in the news. As awareness grows of successful projects like BEP’s anaerobic digestion system in Exeter, Maine, more and more people will realize that turning food waste and animal waste into renewable electricity and heat makes a lot of environmental and economic sense.
Food waste is my biggest pet peeve. It’s easy to take care of at home with composting/vermicomposting yet nobody I know in my day-to-day life makes the effort. I’m already a fan of EAE. I’ll pass this along in Twitter.
Thank you, Robin. We’ll be publishing another blog post on food waste today. This issue will no doubt continue to receive more and more attention, as people begin to realize that our current methods of dealing with the challenge are woefully inadequate. Thanks for following us!