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Welsh minister promotes preferred AD technology

Treating food through anaerobic digestion could generate around 1% of Wales' electricity needs a year, Welsh environment minister Jane Davidson has claimed.

Speaking at the end of last week, as she unveiled Wales' latest recycling figures, Ms Davidson said she considered it “feasible” for Wales to separately collect some 800,000 tonnes of food waste a year from households and businesses for processing in a network of AD plants across Wales – producing 0.2TWHrs of energy.

Welsh environment minister Jane Davidson is a keen advocate of anaerobic digestion
Welsh environment minister Jane Davidson is a keen advocate of anaerobic digestion
She said: “Not only does this have the advantage of producing renewable energy but it also produces a high quality soil improver and fertiliser.”

“I have already announced additional funding over the next three years for local authorities to set up new services to separately collect and treat food waste from households in Wales.

“I am urging local authorities to use anaerobic digestion as their preferred method for the management of the collected food waste from now on,” she added.

The comments came as Ms Davidson revealed that Wales had maintained its 32% recycling rate (see letsrecycle.com story) into the last quarter of 2007-08 and was on track to hit its 40% target for 2009-10. In 2006-07 the figure was 26%.

Ms Davidson said: “This puts Wales in a good position to recycle and compost 40% of its waste by 2010, which is the EU target.

“In fact, some local authorities are already achieving way over that figure – the quarterly statistics show that Ceredigion are at 53% and Powys hit 43%. They are leading the way for the rest of Wales to follow.”

Mrs Davidson is currently drawing up a revised Welsh Waste Strategy, which is due to go out for consultation in the autumn (see letsrecycle.com story

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