Looking at food waste in particular – in homes, businesses and organizations. Looking at bio digesters and other fast composting systems. Finding new and encouraging old ways of recycling our waste organic material. With the aim of replacing chemical nutrients growing new food and capturing carbon in soils.
Organic waste is anything that was once alive, it can be paper, veg peelings or animal waste. The good news is that nature can recycle organic waste for free. And treated correctly it can be of great benefit to soil microbes. These microbes might just be our best bet for removing carbon from the atmosphere and mitigating global warming. And it’s a great way of providing the nutrients to grown new food.
Stopping this material entering our waste stream also has major secondary benefits. It makes everything else easier to recycle, Are you really going to fish that plastic bottle out of the bin once it is covered in coffee grounds and last nights carrots? Most of the problems of handling rubbish, smell and vermin are caused by the organic elements. Keeping them out of the waste stream makes everything else easier.
Methane; If your food waste goes into landfill the chances are it will break down without oxygen (anaerobic) This will produce methane. Atmospheric methane is a massively potent greenhouse gas over the next 100 year producing 34 times more global heating than the equivalent carbon dioxide.
So how do we do it? The sources of organic waste are many and diverse so require many and diverse solutions but here is where I think is a good place to start.
Home composting, It’s not new or sexy but it’s easy and effective. Anyone who has a garden can compost. A compost pile can’t take all our organic waste, but it does mean you can recycle 80% of this waste yourself without generating any carbon from moving or processing. If everyone did this we could remove at least 10% of all out domestic waste. So why isn’t everyone doing it? I suspect that a lot of people think it will smell or attract vermin. This is very easy to prevent with education and support. Removing these barriers and getting more people to compost is the goal of this program.
Digestor pilot project, Anaerobic digestion can be utilised to take all our organic waste, a home based digestor has the huge benefits that it can take any food waste, including meat bones, fish and even dog poop! All can be turned into biogas that can be used for cooking and fertilizer! I have purchased the latest version of a home digestor and its arriving in April. I will run a pilot project to see how it performs in real world Cornish conditions.
Fish and chips, Nothing epitomises a seaside holiday like fish and chips on the waterfront. But will that scrunched up mix of food waste, paper and a chip tray be recycled? Not a chance, we want to change that by working with the councils to install special bins to separate the waste. And use the paper to grow oyster mushrooms.