How One NFL Team Will Turn Food Waste Into Renewable Energy

As if the fact that, in the U.S., we waste 40 percent of our food isn’t shocking enough, a recent study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that total emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane are almost twice as high in the U.S. as previously thought. More potent than carbon dioxide, methane is a deadly contributor to global warming.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), all that uneaten food accounts for 23 percent of methane emissions as it rots in landfills. Other sources include livestock operations and oil production. And yet, properly captured or, better yet, generated in anaerobic digesters that break down food waste before it ever reaches landfills, methane represents a cleaner energy source for use in heating homes, running engines, and generating electricity. Yet challenges to the widespread availability and use of biogas remain.

Enter FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, where a new partnership with the Cleveland Browns and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy has implemented a new system to will divert an estimated 35 tons of stadium food waste from landfills into biodigesters for conversion into energy. The system, called Grind2Energy, is a technology from Emerson’s InSinkErator, a brand many associate with in-sink disposals found in kitchens across the U.S. Far more than an industrial-strength garbage disposal, it’s an integrated system that includes leasing, installation, and service coverage of a closed system that grinds up food waste into a slurry and transports it to an anaerobic digestion facility where it is converted to energy.

Slurry from FirstEnergy Stadium travels to an anaerobic digester operated by Quasar Energy group at the Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center where it will generate enough electricity for a single family for a full year, produce enough natural gas to heat 32 homes for a month and recover enough nutrients to fertilize three football fields of crops.

As well as diverting food waste from landfills, the system at FirstEnergy Stadium will reduce carbon emissions by 28,000 pounds per year, generate enough electricity for a single family for a full year, produce enough natural gas to heat 32 homes for a month, and recover enough nutrients to fertilize three football fields of crops.

[source: http://ecowatch.com/2014/01/07/nfl-team-food-waste-renewable-energy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nfl-team-food-waste-renewable-energy]