Supermarkets finally to recycle food waste
September 17, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Ever wondered what happens to all those old bruised and black bananas and all those potatoes with shoots sprouting out of them when they are done with in the major supermarkets? Well sadly and strangely the answer wasn’t a very good one for the environment… until now. This might soon be about to change.
Waitrose announced this month that they would be piloting a new ingenious scheme that will mean all that old food will be turned into a renewable fuel. There will be five Waitrose stores across the UK that will be gathering all their old degradable food and then seeing it heated and turned into a methane-rich bio-gas that will be capable of acting as a replacement for electricity. It then leaves an odourless and entirely organic fertiliser.
Anaerobic digestion might sound like a physical way of helping us avoid stomach aches but it’s actually the name of the process. It is much easier than we might think to hold back all the waste foods from the supermarkets and then add to a container for this process. It’s not actually Waitrose who conduct the anaerobic digestion but a company called Biogen.
It’s Waitrose’s aim to power over 500 homes using this process and to get the bio-gas plugged into the National Grid as soon as the tests have been passed and approved. Something that helps prevent things going to landfill and also provides us with a new source of energy seems likely to be a sure fire hit.
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