![]() ![]() Steve Melnik, a third-generation dairy farmer who runs Bar-Way with his son, is a fan of the digester. "It's like the way you would think about feeding yourself, right? If you eat too much ice cream, you might have a stomachache later." That's when excess foam builds up and slows gas production. "We've learned that too much fat will cause a 'foaming event' in the digester," Bacha said. When you add up all the fossil fuel emissions that go in to growing, processing, and then chucking uneaten food in the United States each year, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that it's equivalent to the annual emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants.īut getting the right mix of banana peels, spoiled ice cream, and manure for the digester can be tricky. Putting food waste in the mix doesn't just boost digester efficiency, it also keeps those cookies and veggie scraps out of landfills and incinerators. The anaerobic digester at the Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield. They can also be used on smaller dairy farms, like Bar-Way's 250-cow operation. "Co-digesters" like this one, which use both manure and food waste, offer a steadier supply of biogas than ones that run on manure alone, said Bancha. (At some facilities, the biogas is refined and pumped into existing gas pipelines.) ![]() The biogas is burned to make electricity, which is fed into the grid. Bacteria from the manure eat the food waste and belch out methane - or “biogas,” as digester proponents prefer to call it - which is collected in giant black balloons on top of the tank. The digester is basically a huge tank that works kind of like a giant cow stomach, said Bacha. "About 20% of what we feed to the digester is manure," said Kaylyn Bacha, the operations technical manager with Vanguard Renewables, the company that runs the digester at Bar-Way. "The additional 80% is coming from food waste." An 80,000 gallon load of distillery waste from the Tree House Brewery in Charlton being pumped into the anaerobic digester at the Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield. The Bar-Way dairy farm in Deerfield doesn’t smell as nice as the cookie factory, but the cows contribute an important ingredient to the anaerobic digester process: manure. "Not all of the solution, but part of the solution, so long as it's done well." A giant cow stomach "Anaerobic digestion should be part of the solution," said Kirstie Pecci, executive director of the waste-reduction nonprofit, Just Zero. Instead of the food waste rotting in a landfill and emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas, digesters capture the emissions and turn it into energy. Environmental advocates aren't quite bullish on the technology, but cautiously optimistic. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)Īnaerobic digesters have a spotty history in the U.S., but they're now enjoying a boom as a climate solution. To help decrease this, the state has tightened its food waste ban as of November, 2022, any business that generates more than a half a ton of food waste per week cannot send it to landfills or incinerators.Īt Fancypants, Houseman is already working to keep cookie waste out of landfills he donates many misfit cookies or sells them at a discount, and the ones that can’t be saved go to a facility called an “anaerobic digester.” Food waste to be processed at the Vanguard Renewables Organics Recycling Facility in Agawam. Those cookies that end up on the floor are part of a bigger problem: Massachusetts throws away almost one million tons of food waste every year. If you drop something on the floor, it's sure not getting sold to a person, right? No matter what." Cookies in food waste bin at Fancypants Baking Company in Walpole. "There's human error that's possible, they're moving quickly. He points to a line of women piping white icing onto blue snowflake cookies. ![]() And with that many cookies, there's bound to be some mistakes. Justin Housman, who co-founded Fancypants with his wife, said the company makes up to 300,000 cookies a day. The Fancypants Baking Company in Walpole is like a Willy Wonka cookie factory at every turn there are giant bowls of dough and tall racks of snowflake cookies and gingerbread men. Fertilizer produced by the anaerobic digester is applied to crops at the Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield. ![]()
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