That's just a drop in the biogas production bucket for food waste. So much room to grow! #Anaerobicdigestion #RenewableEnergy #RNG #FoodWasteSystems
There are 110 food waste-only biogas systems currently operating in the U.S. and a further 10 expected to come online in 2024. This sector of the overall biogas industry is growing, but still has limited impact on the 106 million tons of food waste that the EPA estimates is generated each year in the US. The recently released National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics confirms the major role that anaerobic digestion can play in the disposal of inedible food waste, not to mention its other benefits in creating renewable energy, reducing GHGs and producing fertilizer. Of the 66 million tons of POST-consumer food that goes to waste each year in the U.S., based on our biogas project database we estimate that just 5% is recycled by 45 post-consumer stand-alone food waste AD facilities. Our data shows that these projects each recycle an average of about 70,000 tons of food waste each year. New facilities in the pipeline, many serving large urban populations and having capacities to recycle 300,000 tons per year or more at each project, will make further inroads into the American food waste mountain. However, the pace we’re on now will not get us to recycling even half of the food waste we produce in most of our lifetimes. What are some of the solutions? Stay tuned and follow this page for more on this issue tomorrow. #BenefitsOfBiogas #RenewableEnergy https://lnkd.in/eR6vWjTe
