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Green Building Bible, Fourth Edition
Green Building Bible, fourth edition (both books)
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Renewable Energy: Energy from waste food

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    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeJun 3rd 2014
     
    It might seem like a good thing to use wasted food as a feedstock for making energy.

    I disagree -- we shouldn't be wasting it in the first place!
    • CommentAuthorowlman
    • CommentTimeJun 3rd 2014
     
    Correct tony, but it's a by product of poor education on the one hand and affluence on the other. Sometimes both are in same hand.
    • CommentAuthorSeret
    • CommentTimeJun 4th 2014
     
    What sort of waste are you talking about Tony? A lot of the waste biomass that gets used for energy is a byproduct (eg: bagasse).
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeJun 4th 2014
     
    Food waste, a new plant has been set up to use 100t of food waste per day from London, they will be paying supermarkets and businesses to take ir collecting it free.
    • CommentAuthorSeret
    • CommentTimeJun 4th 2014
     
    Ah right. The problem there is that food is perishable. Expecting any logistic system to perfectly distribute a rapidly perishable product without any wastage is asking a bit much. There's already a financial incentive for distributors and retailers to avoid waste, not sure you could do much more than that really. If you try charging them extra to take it away they'll just start getting rid of it on the sly.

    At least it's not going into landfill and breaking down anaerobically.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSteamyTea
    • CommentTimeJun 4th 2014
     
    Anaerobic digester are used on farms to turn the cattle poo into biogas, I cant see a problem with that.
    I do see a problem with using household food waste as we should not be producing much, but that is a problem that has been created with the 'slow food' and 'organic' movements. Preprocessed food has little waste throughout the whole production process. Try making a chicken dish at home and see how much waste you can get.

    I think the money would be better spent turning sewage works into energy generation plants, then food waste can be flushed down the drain, either though a 'biological' process or though a mechanical processes. Would also save it being washed up on our beaches.
    • CommentAuthorbella
    • CommentTimeJun 4th 2014
     
    Steamy Tea, you probably missed the clip of countless packets of "out of date" supermarket bread and other "pre-processed" items e.g. dinners being gathered up at the biogas plant. Didn't look very "slow food" or "organic" to me. Flushing household food waste down the drain, as in the US, is a good idea but it won't get much out of my chicken dishes - unless bones are catered for.
    • CommentAuthorCWatters
    • CommentTimeJun 4th 2014 edited
     
    This was in the papers recently

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2646997/Supermarkets-send-tonnes-food-biogas-feeding-hungry-green-energy-subsidies.html

    Supermarkets only give 2% of unwanted food to hungry families and send the rest to be turned into biofuel because it is cheaper


    Is it just "cheaper" or can supermarkets actually sell the food to the biofuel producers? It appears to be a case of subsidies for biofuel being used to buy waste food from supermarkets meaning charities don't get a look in.
    • CommentAuthorborpin
    • CommentTimeJun 5th 2014
     
    Firstly I deplore poverty. Secondly I hate the fact that so much organic material that could be disposed of in a manner that converts it into something useful, is dumped in holes in the ground.

    Charities can cause self perpetuating problems. If you create a situation whereby someone can feed themselves from donated food, there is a risk, that they become reliant on that and do not have any incentive to manage their resources better so they do not need that 'charity'. If supermarkets simply gave away all their unsold food, would their sales actually drop? It is a risk. I fully believe that there are people who need help - and should get it. Equally there are many that really need to give up Sky and expensive mobile phones and spend the money on the basics instead.

    So supermarkets should help proportionately but I do not think they should be demonised for not simply giving it all away.

    I think we should have far more AD type plants and the sewage treatment plants as well. The usual trouble getting them built is NIMBYs.

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