Harvest Power, Triple T Trucking work toward zero waste

Today, Harvest Power’s partnership with New Hampshire-based Triple T Trucking was featured in the Brattleboro Reformer. The story, by staff writer Chris Garofalo, presented plans to create an organics to energy and recycling station in the New England area that works toward a common goal of zero waste while creating renewable energy.

Harvest CEO Paul Sellew was interviewed for the piece. He explained that both the renewable energy and compost production model for this project differ from earlier methods of eliminating waste:

To remove organic materials from the waste stream, Harvest will produce high quality compost products while generating electricity from food and yard waste.

“So our view is to combine these two, increase diversion from landfills, recycle these organic materials and beneficially reuse them through the production of renewable energy and high-value compost,” said Sellew. “We think this is the next evolution in the development of the organics industry in the United States.”

The company presently operates a similar facility in British Colombia, Canada, but has several others that are expected to go online by the end of the year.

The story also does a clear and concise job of explaining the technology behind this plan.

Harvest uses High Solids Anaerobic Digestion (HSAD) at its facilities, the degradation and stabilization of organic materials with a solids content between 25 and 50 percent. By comparison, a wet anaerobic digestion system processes the same materials with a solids content between only 2 and 15 percent.

Anaerobic digestion reflects the same process that occurs in a cow’s stomach — using similar micro-organisms in a large chamber and capture the biogas as it is produced in an ideal environment.

Through HSAD, Harvest operators break down food and yard waste using naturally occurring bacteria to produce renewable biogas energy. Workers then aerobically compost the remaining digestate to capture the nutrients and organic matter to create a high quality compost-based product.

The partnership with Triple T represents a mutual interest in environmental sustainability for this region. Though the initiative has the ability to create jobs, improve air quality and boost recycling efforts, the article also notes the challenges yet to come.

Read the story in its entirety here. Let us know your thoughts.

Terrain mag calls composting ‘up and coming’ industry

The Spring 2010 issue of Terrain magazine features an interesting and informative piece called Compost Confidential, which details the promising growth of composting as an industry, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

Writer Amy Kiser considers composting an up and coming industry, one that “follows on the heels of recycling as an environmentally and economically preferable municipal waste option.”

To prove her point, Kiser illustrates the way corporate waste companies, like Waste Management, Inc.,  have begun to embrace the power of composting.

The article reads: “This January, Texas-based garbage giant Waste Management, Inc. announced that it will “expand organics recycling facilities across the US and Canada” by investing in Harvest Power, the largest food and yard waste composting facility in North America.”

The Terrain story details the ways in which organic waste continues to be diverted from its original path, straight into a landfill, toward processes like anaerobic digestion, which has the power to transform it into renewable energy.

As Kiser writes: “In the last fifteen years, the development of anaerobic digesters in Europe has exploded, spurred by the European Union Landfill Directive of 1999 that required member states to stabilize organic material prior to land-filling. If the US were to follow suit, in the pursuit of minimizing methane from landfills and maximizing energy production from renewable resources, anaerobic digesters could indeed be the next big thing. Waste Management is betting on it.”

Read the full article at EcologyCenter.org.

What do you envision will be the future of the composting industry? Do you agree that anaerobic digestion, as a technology, has the power to become “the next big thing?” We’d like to hear your thoughts.

Construction begins on UK’s largest AD plant

 

The United Kingdom may have already earned trendsetter status for its efforts in sustainabilty and food waste management. As construction begins on what will be the largest anaerobic digestion plant so far in the region, experts say many more AD plants in the UK will follow suit.

The Selby Renewable Energy Park, designed by Austrian firm Entec Biogas, will have the capability to transform more food waste into renewable energy than any other plant in the region. Thanks to partial funding from the UK Waste and Resource Action Programme, the plant will use state-of-the-art technology to treat food waste from supermarkets, restaurants, and waste management companies for processing.

According to an article in FoodProductionDaily.com, Entec Biogas CEO Bernhard Schultz was quoted as saying: “After having successfully realised AD plants for food waste in Japan and Germany, we are very happy to set up a milestone in the UK market with the largest AD plant for food waste. We see high potential for these types of plants during the next few years in the UK market. In general, these types of biogas plants for food waste are trendsetting for the whole European market.”

The article details primary sources of food waste in the UK and notes that the Selby facility will allow the government to divert “as much food as possible away from landfill sites.” While saving space in landfills, the organic waste can instead be transformed into renewable energy for the region.

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