Why Food Waste
Food waste is one of the single largest constituent of municipal solid waste stream.
- Easily Biodegradable – Food waste is highly biodegradable and has a much higher volatile solids destruction rate (86-90%) than biosolids. This means that even though additional material is added to the digesters, the end residual will only increase by a small amount.
- Renewable Energy Generation – Arguably, the most important reason that food waste should be anaerobically digested is for capturing the energy content. Unlike biosolids and animal manures, post consumer food scraps have had no means of prior energy capture. In fact, in a study done by East Bay Municipal Utility District it was revealed that food waste has up to three times as much energy potential as biosolids.
Food waste has THREE TIMES the methane production potential as biosolids!
As energy prices continue to climb and our world looks towards renewable energy generation and energy independence, capturing the energy from food waste becomes more important.
When facilities start digesting food waste, the increased energy production allows them to offset the amount of energy they are using and potentially sell excess energy back to the grid.
