The commercial growing and packing sector will be intimately familiar with the quantity of waste produced during the processing of the various fruits and vegetables they handle. The ultimate destination of this waste is what is changing.
Landfill, animal feed, recycling and now Anaerobic Digestion are all destinations for the waste from this sector. Landfill used to account for a large proportion of the waste in this sector. For example, 4.4 million uneaten apples in the UK being thrown away each day in Britain in 2008, most of them ending up in landfill. http://www.physorg.com/news126948054.html. This sparked the “Love Food Hate Waste” campaign to reduce the amount of food being wasted in British homes.
Commercial growers and packers are looking for options which are cost effective and will bring some benefit to their businesses. MB400, SEaB Energy’s small containerised Anaerobic Digester, is the answer. The unit will take the onsite waste and turn it into valuable electricity, heat, fertiliser and mulch. MB400 is unique, processing 0.5 – 2.5 tonnes in a single unit per day (200 – 100 tonnes per year). This capacity can be scaled by deploying multiple units per site. The unit arrives ready to use, self-optimises and can be remotely monitored for ease of maintenance.
Table from the Fruit and Vegetable Resource Map, WRAP, June 2011
http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/Resource_Map_Fruit_and_Veg_final_6_june_2011.7e460a07.10854.pdf
