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.

The Debate Over the Highest and Best Use of Organics

By Elizabeth Lowell

Recently, there has been a lot of debate over organics in the landfills and a landfill’s role in generating energy in the form of landfill gas. Today’s landfills are constructed as sanitary landfills, meaning they have a liner and they are sealed with a cap when full. The material disposed into them is compacted very, very tightly. In practice, this turns landfills into great big anaerobic digesters that produce a form of biogas with around 50% methane content.  The amount of electricity a landfill can generate and its emissions of greenhouse gas emissions are determined by its landfill gas capture efficiency. Just like at wastewater treatment plants, dairy farms, and high solids anaerobic digesters, in landfills the greatest producer of biogas is organic waste like yard clippings and food scraps.

Here is the debate: Should organics be dumped in landfills that capture biogas and generate energy? Or should they be diverted, even banned, from landfills and sent to composting, and increasingly anaerobic digestion, facilities?

BioCycle Magazine’s May 2010 issue was titled Putting the Landfill Energy Myth to Rest and included a 12-page article covering everything from gas generation and decomposition rates at landfills to the nutrient content in organic waste and various organic processing technologies. A complimentary PDF of the article may be downloaded from BioCycle: http://www.jgpress.com/1005_lem/bc1005lem.html. Days after the article hit the presses, Florida Governor Charlie Crist vetoed a bill that would have overturned a state ban on disposal of leaves and other yard waste in landfills. In his letter to the state legislature explaining his veto, the Governor stated, “Although the bill requires landfills to capture and make beneficial use of methane gas to qualify to accept yard trash, it directs materials to landfills that would otherwise be recycled.” The legislature has recently set a 75% recycling goal for the state. Read more on Governor Crist’s veto at Waste & Recycling News or at Harvest Power’s blog here or here.

During the same month that BioCycle issued its report, SWANA (the Solid Waste Association of North America) approved a statement concluding that a report entitled The Importance of Landfill Gas Capture and Utilization in the U.S. “presents a valid representation of the state-of-the-art of landfill gas capture and recovery as practiced in the U.S.” SWANA went further, endorsing certain conclusions of the report as being “fully consistent with [the organization’s] mission and policies.” To read more about SWANA’s position, click here.

The Landfill Gas Capture and Utilization report details the efficiency of gas generation and capture, noting that efficiency varies from landfill to landfill based on when the capture system is put in place, the content of the waste stream the landfill receives, and many other factors. It also discusses the lower capital costs associated with gas capture systems (though it does not include an analysis of the capital and operating expenses of landfills, which serve as the gas producer), and carbon reduction credits associated with composting versus landfill gas, focusing on detectable emissions from composting operations while acknowledging that these vary greatly by facility and are substantially decreased by well-run operations.

The report, while lengthy and thorough, neglects to mention the numerous beneficial properties of compost.  Compost and compost-based soil products add nutrients, improve soil structure, aid in water retention, reduce erosion, and enhance plant growth. Compost-based soil products also offer an alternative to petro- and chemical-based fertilizers. A landfill gas capture system, no matter how efficient, will never produce compost.

These are just two of many articles and discussions on the topic. The debate continues.  We can put organic waste in landfills and produce energy.  We can put organic waste in composting facilities and benefit from the resulting compost. We can create renewable energy and high quality compost from organic waste through anaerobic digestion and composting. So what is the highest and best use (in terms of economics, efficiency, and environmental impacts/benefits) of organic waste? At Harvest, our money is on energy and compost.

Globe 2010: World-renowned sustainability experts

GLOBE 2010 is one of the world’s largest and longest-running events dedicated to the business of the environment. Every two years, over 10,000 professionals from 70+ countries come together at GLOBE for three days of thought-leading sessions presented by world-renowned sustainability experts; to survey leading-edge environmental innovations; and to participate in unparalleled global networking opportunities.

The Harvest Power Team will be in attendance of this event as well on Thursday and Friday, Look us up if you are around!

Well recognized as the world’s most influential and prestigious international environment industry event, GLOBE brings people together to discuss current trends and to showcase innovative technology solutions for the world’s environmental problems. Every two years, over 10,000 participants from over 80 countries gather in Vancouver, generating over $400 million in new environmental business.

Government decisions makers, corporate executives, and environmental technology innovators engage in high-level dialogues about pressing environmental issues such as corporate sustainability, energy and climate change, finance, and building better cities. We have brought in a host of well-respected individuals to help make the business case for eco-efficiency, including HRH Prince Philippe of Belgium, former Prime Minister Paul Martin, Maurice Strong, Klaus Töepfer, John Prescott, Mark Moody-Stuart, Amory Lovins and Ray Anderson.

GLOBE

Series events have been used to preview innovative ideas and major multilateral processes for corporate and industry leaders from around the world in advance of major international gatherings such as the Rio and Johannesburg World Summits.

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