Experts gathering at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago this month said an estimated 30 to 50% of the food produced globally goes to waste. On average, Americans throw away about 33 pounds (15kg) of food each month. In the UK, one example of a company tackling food waste in a ‘super sized’ fashion is waste management firm Biffa, which recently opened its 120,000 tonne per year capacity facility.

CBS News report (17 March 2012):

Experts gathering this week at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago said an estimated 30 to 50 percent of the food produced globally goes to waste.

Reuters reports that on average, Americans throw away about 33 pounds of food each month which adds up to 396 lbs. in lost groceries a year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Food production also hurts the environment by taking the world’s water supply, emitting greenhouse gases and consumes a large amount of energy and chemicals.

As the world’s population rises so too does demand for food and pressure on farmers. By 2050, experts estimate the population will grow from an estimated 7 to 9 billion people.

A growing population means more demand and high food prices.

NRDC specialist Dana Gunders said that no matter how sustainable farming is, “If the food’s not getting eaten … it’s not a good use of our resources.”

Depending where you live, waste comes in different forms. For developing nations, food spoils more readily if it is not properly refrigerated. In wealthier Western countries, people often throw away good food.

In 2010 alone, 33 million tons of food ended up in landfills and incinerators across the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA have suggested some possible solutions including recycling unused food to shelters and soup kitchens, while clarifying the difference between “sell by” and “use by” dates. That could help some people from throwing away their produce too soon.

Source: www.cbsnews.com

Ben Messenger is associate editor of Waste Management World magazine:

Packaging often proves a challenge for biowaste processing facilities. A new ‘super’ £24 million anaerobic digestion facility in the UK has the technology to overcome this and well as set the standard for large-scale infrastructure, explains Ben Messenger.

Around 10 million people in East Africa are currently at risk of starving, in what aid agencies are calling the worst drought for 60 years. It is more than a little perplexing, therefore, that a recent study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shows that one third of the entire World’s food production – about 1.3 billion tonnes – goes to waste. Every year, consumers in rich countries waste 230 million tonnes of food, almost as much as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa. According to the FAO, North American and European consumers are each discarding an average of 100 kg food waste per year, with the largest constituent being fresh fruit and vegetables.

Financial incentives

In the UK, figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), show that around 16 million tonnes of food waste is generated each year, with around half of this coming from businesses, and at least 40% currently ending up in landfill. And all that waste raises more than just moral questions. It causes half of all waste related CO2 equivalent emissions in the UK – 3% of the national total. Because of this, as in many countries around the world, the UK government has identified food as a priority waste stream.

While the government’s recent Waste Review identifies prevention as the most effective means of tackling the issue of food waste, it also recognises that some food waste is unavoidable. The key to negating the impact of such waste lies in treating it in the most sustainable way, it says. By aiming to treat food waste as high up the waste hierarchy as possible, the government has identified Anaerobic Digestion (AD) and in-vessel composting as the most appropriate technologies with which to treat food waste.

To this end a number of financial incentives are being offered by the government to encourage the development of AD, including Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) per MWh, Feed in Tariffs (FiTs) and a Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) for biogas combustion. As a result, a number of companies are investing in food waste infrastructure projects around the country.

One example of a company tackling food waste in a ‘super sized’ fashion is waste management firm Biffa, which recently opened its 120,000 tonne per year capacity food waste AD facility adjacent to its landfill site in Poplars, Staffordshire.

The UK’s new big hitter

Speaking at the opening of the £24 million Poplars facility, Ian Wakelin, Biffa chief executive, explains that this ‘super’ facility is a strategically important step forward in the company’s plans, and makes more sense than having lots of small plants dotted around the country.

“Firstly it’s cheaper,” he says. “It’s cheaper for us and it’s cheaper for our customers. Secondly you can deploy more technology in bigger plants.”

With plans to roll out a further three to five such facilities in the coming years, this is a strategy that Biffa intends to follow. The idea sounds like a good one. Scale up the facilities and use economies of scale to invest in more sophisticated technologies that will allow for greater yields, less downtime and higher quality outputs. But what makes this facility ‘super’?

According to Wakelin one of the problems that AD food waste facilities typically face is that of packaging. When Biffa began designing this plant two years ago it was very keen that it should be able to accept as wide a range of food wastes as possible. By leveraging its size the Poplars facility has been able to install sophisticated machinery that will strip the packaging away from the food and send the plastics for recycling. The development of the plant was heavily influenced by lessons the company learned in extracting gas from mixed black bag waste at the Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plant in Leicester, which it has been running since 2003, explains Dr John Casey, director of engineering and quality at Biffa.

As such the company applied the same design principles of creating a robust system, with built in redundancy that allows for one part of the plant to undergo maintenance without shutting down the whole operation. The whole design and build of the facility has been completed in two years, with work continuing through winter temperatures that sank as low as -20°C.

Source: www.waste-management-world.com