Bagging Food Waste for Fuel

Bagging food waste (Photo – rochdale.gov)

We are always learning new ways to conserve resources, to create new ones and to face the challenges of our increasingly disposable world.

By Briony James

One of these new ways is our fuel. We all know that oil and natural gas are limited in quantity, and that we must find other means of propulsion. One of those ways is biogas and there is a way to create this important resource right in our own homes!

Bagging food waste

Trash collection and reduction is an important part of our ecological necessity. We are faced with a plethora of non-compostable refuse that is expanding our landfills to a breaking point and letting an important means of creation slip through our fingers.

Here in Pasadena, residents are required to bag food wasted separately from other trash. While this may seem redundant, there is a very good reason for the practice.

Separated out at the landfill

Food waste is being separated from general garbage at the Scholl Canyon Landfill by hand. Workers separate bags of produce trimmings, meat bones and cuts, wilted veggies and such, and these are then reduced to a slurry that is piped into storage containers. Separate from the food waste, yard waste is composted to be used as rich fertilizer. The food waste slurries are then piped into tanker trucks and removed to Carson’s A.K. Warren Water Resource Facility. There, in huge circular tanks referred to as anaerobic digesters, the waste converts to methane gas that is further stored as Compressed Natural Gas for use in public utility vehicles and in other manners. Residents are urged to use existing plastics, such as the bags carrots are packed in etc., rather than buying additional bags of any kind because those bags will be separated out at the landfill.

In this way, those potato peelings and carrot tops, the bag of celery that went limp and, the chicken you forgot about, will all be used in a manner that saves the use of petroleum products, making waste a commodity worth saving while reducing landfills and unused methane pouring into the atmosphere. It’s a clever way to save our planet, reduce our carbon footprint and get rid of the garbage, all at the same time!