What a waste

The world today dumps over 70 percent of food waste into landfills, rather than harnessing it for fuel and electricity. An average city in the developing world generates around 4000 tonnes of waste daily! Over the next 25 years, global energy demand will grow by 50 percent, while global oil supply dwindles at a rapid pace. Waste-to-energy is an obvious solution to meet the world’s burgeoning energy demand, believe experts. The technology is well-known and the only problem is to organise collection, segragation and transportation.

A recent report “Waste-to-Energy Technology Markets”, which analyzes the global market opportunity for WTE, expects waste-to-energy to grow from its current market size of $6.2 billion to $29.2 billion by 2022.

Currently there are some 800 industrial-scale WTE plants in more than three dozen countries around the world, and likely thousands of smaller systems at individual sites. Most employ anaerobic digesters, which make use of microorganisms to break down and convert organic waste into a fuel such as biogas, biodiesel or ethanol. With some 70 percent of food waste around the world still going into landfills, there is a lot of potential feedstock to keep this environmentally friendly carbon neutral fuel source coming. The waste from small slaughterhouses, breweries, dairy farms and coffee shops can power hundreds of typical homes each day if the infrastructure is in place to sort, collect and process the flow of organic material.

If we cannot control the waste we generate, especially food waste, the next best option is to use it effectively instead of letting it go to rot or polluting land and air.