It goes without saying that every effort should be made to reduce avoidable food waste. UK households throw away around 7.8 million tonnes of food waste alone a year. As a nation, we are getting better at reducing our food waste, but a level of unavoidable waste will remain.
To unlock its potential as an energy resource, it needs to be collected. According to WRAP, only around 47% of local authorities in England offer some form of separate food collection service to domestic households.
Infrastructure
It’s vitally important that the infrastructure is in place to make the very most of this unavoidable food waste, and it is our role as AD operators to ensure we can offer the best opportunities to convert this unavoidable waste into renewable energy for homes and businesses.
Central government could encourage local authorities to find landfill alternatives through legislation, most notably in the form of a ban to landfill. Many have been calling for central government to explicitly support separate food and garden waste collections over other collection schemes, something that would greatly help feedstock supply.
Tamar Energy’s AD facilities are being designed to be as flexible as possible in terms of feedstock. For example, our facility at Halstead, currently being commissioned, will take municipal food waste among its feedstock and convert this into electricity.
Our AD facility in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, is a joint venture with QV Foods, a major supplier of vegetable and potato products to retailers including ASDA. The facility processes around 30,000 tonnes of organic material per year with the majority of this coming from vegetable and potato trimmings from QV Foods operations – unavoidable food waste from the food manufacturing process.
Register for free to comment