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Ealing to turn all waste food into electricity
Mark Prigg, Science Correspondent18.04.08
Ealing has become the first London borough to recycle all its residents' food waste into electricity.
The council, which has been collecting leftovers for the past two years, uses tiny bugs to break down the food into fertiliser.
The process, called anaerobic digestion, creates gas which is converted into electricity. This is, in turn, used to power the processing plant. Any excess is sold to the National Grid.
Today, Ealing announced plans to send hundreds of tonnes of food every month to the Biogen plant in Bedfordshire following a successful sixmonth trial.
Keith Townsend, executive director of environment and customer services, said: "We have signed up to this scheme as part of our commitment to being environmentally friendly and tackling climate change. Recycling rates have soared across the borough over recent months and it's a great achievement for Ealing to be the first council to recycle all of its food waste in the most environmentally efficient way possible."
Anaerobic digestionis a biological process that relies on naturally occurring micro-organisms to break down organic matter into a valuable fertiliser while producing biogas.
Using the process for waste food reduces the amount that would otherwise end up in landfill sites to produce harmful greenhouse gases.
"The process is rather like creating a giant stomach," said Julia Dunmow of Biogen, the company which owns the plant.
"The compacted waste comes from Ealing and is mixed with pig slurry from our farm, then placed in a giant warm vat for 30 days, where it is digested by microbes."
As the microbes digest the waste, they create heat, which is used to warm the plant, and gas, which is used to create the electricity.
"Over an average hour, we can create enough power for 1,000 homes, so we think we can use this technique to create significant amounts of electricity," said Miss Dunmow.
The process also creates a large quantity of fertiliser, which is used by nearby farms.
Reader views (2)
this is a good initiative. if something like this happen in nigeria especially in benin where there is huge waste of food waste, in fact the electricity gotten from it will be enough to power a state.
any company interested in investing in this state please contact me on my email. I can provide land to use free of charge.
- Eri, benin, nigeria
Excellent initiative. A recent report stated that nearly half the recycling collected by councils ends up in landfill. For a large family it takes a considerable time to separate the recycling eg taking off plastic edges of tissue boxes or removing taking paper off cans,cleaning glass plastic and metal, storage it so your home doesn't look like a dump. I would be infuriated if all this effort (and hot water and detergent)was wasted by having my recycling sent to landfill. I would like all councils (and particularly my own, Ealing) to post on internet/council magazine exactly who collects waste and how they process it. I have had named company for plastic collection but what assurance have I they don't dump the plastic recycling they can't handle. I would be even more appalled if it was containered over to China only for them to pollute their own people just because we can't sort out our own waste.
- Anita Morris, Ealing
