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Charting Our Water Future: Pathways and Tools to Reform
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Kitchen food waste, the options and their consequences
Kitchen food waste, the options and their consequences
03:00 p.m. (BST) / 10:00 a.m. (EDT)
21st July 2010
Zero Waste working group
Dr Tim Evans - Tim Evans Environment and Chair of CIWEM's Wastewater Management Panel
Kitchen food waste is the most difficult fraction of biodegradable municipal waste to manage. One solution will not suit all citizens or situations. Home composting is great for those willing and/or able to practice it but many are not and kerbside collection discourages it. The Global Warming Potentials of other options are in the order: landfill >> incineration > composting >> anaerobic digestion, for which the GWP is the same whether the food waste is delivered by truck or via in-sink food waste disposers (FWD) connected to the public sewers.
Systematic operational data from Surahammar in Sweden show that when FWD installation went from zero to 50% of households within a period of 10 years, the biogas increased by 46% but the cost of wastewater treatment did not change. As a result of Surahammar’s overall waste strategy, not just FWDs, the tonnage of waste to landfill from the municipality decreased from 3600 tonnes/year in 1996 to 1400 tonnes/year in 2007.
For more information, please contact Izabela Stacewicz.