Every large business decision involves a fundamental conflict. You’re either pulled from ease versus long-term value, and the immediate simplicity of outsourcing vs the control of ownership.
Or leaders are forced to weigh simplicity against effort. What feels like the easiest path now – the quick fix, or the minimal solution, could very much become complicated in the future.
Waste Management is no stranger to these conflicts. The easiest solution out there for dealing with the by-products of your production process is to collect them all in one place then give it to someone else to deal with.
We see this across the food and beverage industry in several forms, but most common of all are threefold;
- liquid waste and solid waste are separated during production,
- liquid waste is sent to the drain,
3. and, solid waste/sludge is collected and sent to off-site anaerobic digestion plant.
Advantages of this process are can seem obvious – extremely low investment required to start and the main asset investments consist of bins and tanks. The ongoing costs of outsourcing this are directly proportional to the amount of waste generated, costings are calculated per tonne or m3 waste treated.
However, this strategy does come with some serious pitfalls. First off, your ability to scale and grow is limited by your drain discharge consent limits. These being stringent rules that are heavily imposed on wastewater producers by the water utility; they can limit the volume, strength, temperature, pH of the wastewater along with numerous other challenging caveats such as the amount of copper in the effluent, which we see becoming a challenge in Scotland affecting whisky distillers.
The more specific the discharge criteria for the wastewater the more the costs start to rise.
A business may need to add chemicals to the wastewater, or need to use solids separation technology such as a dissolved air flotation system (commonly known as a DAF), the result of both being additional hits to a businesses bottom line.
The same can be said for the collection of solid waste, think left over fruit or vegetable trimmings, yeast, or fats. A business will pay per tonne of waste collected. This value starts adding up, ranging from £14-45/tonne depending on the supply and demand for solids at the nearest anaerobic digestion facility and the distance from the facility, adding fuel and the cost of running the vehicle to these increasing costs.
The AD facility will then be taking this waste and turning it into biogas, which is great right? But they’re then selling that as energy to the grid, profiting from your waste.
Think about a food manufacturer who produces 50 tonnes of solid waste per week, with 25 tonnes collected twice per week.
If the nearest AD plant is 25 miles away that means the journey to and from your site is 50 miles round trip, or 100 miles per week, 5,200 miles per year. That’s like driving a truck from Buckingham Palace to Kenya! If a lorry emits 1kg of CO2 per mile driven, that is producing 5.2tonnes of Carbon Emissions per year, just moving waste from A to B! That is about the same weight as the African elephant you see when you arrive!
Wouldn’t a better solution be one that could treat all waste on site?
This will enable your business to achieve those discharge consents, remove or considerably reduce the need for hauling waste. As well as generating carbon neutral energy that could be used in the production process, and deliver a net financial and environmental benefit to the business.
Of course, it would, and there are not many solutions on the market that can provide that all-encompassing approach.
The WASE EMR technology is one of those solutions.
The WASE EMR is a next generation modular anaerobic digestion system that breaks down waste faster and more efficiently than conventional AD plants, meaning a smaller footprint (and lower cost) so that it can fit onto existing production sites.
It can remove <90% of organics from the wastewater/solids and can be combined with other technologies to lower the strength even further. As it breaks down organics in the waste streams, it generates biogas, rich in methane, which is used as a direct replacement for fossilised thermal energy (natural gas/oil/kerosene) and can be converted into electricity or even vehicle fuel. The WASE system generates enough energy to run itself and leaves a net energy yield that the manufacturer can use to power its factory or even its fleet of vehicles!
This leaves the food/beverage manufacturer with a solution that is no longer an overhead, but an asset delivering value to their business in the form of reduced costs, reduced carbon and a solution that can deliver a return on investment in 3-5years.
If this all sounds like a scenario you are facing in your business, do not hesitate to reach out to the team at WASE and we can help you turn your waste into your next product!
