Four Fascinating Ways to Turn Trash Into Fuel | World Wide Waste | Insider Business

we throw away 1.3 billion tons of food every year and as that trash piles up entrepreneurs all over the world are inventing ways to use that waste as fuel like the men in Argentina turning waste from a Cider Mill into what he calls biologs used for barbecues for the town in Indonesia using stinky runoff from tofu factories to power gas stoves and the inventor in Sierra Leone who turns coconut shells into briquettes I was like it's either it works or it works it needs to work we traveled around the globe to find out how people are getting energy from worldwide food waste at the bowenpali market in Hyderabad India 10 tons of food go unsold each day but instead of going to a landfill it's turned into electricity that will power street lights buildings and a kitchen that preps meals for 800 people the first step is to chop up larger vegetables and load them onto a conveyor belt some of the vegetables are spoiled others are thrown away because it costs Farmers too much to transport them back home the conveyor belt carries the material to a shredder which further breaks down the food into smaller more uniform particles in a single day it handles the same amount of vegetables that 150 Indians eat in a year a grinder crushes the mixture into pulp which is pumped through underground tanks and into two digesters so another big digesters basically have a bacteria which have operated the absence of oxygen or anaerobic bacteria and they actually eat essentially the food base that we are putting in there and give out methane and carbon dioxide any organic materials emit these Planet warming gases as they decompose but the massive amount of food waste makes landfills the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions just behind fossil fuels and agriculture burning biogas to make electricity is a way to harvest those gases before they enter the atmosphere at bowenpali the fuel can be stored locally in four huge balloons until it's ready to use and it goes all the way to the kitchen which is about roughly 400 500 meters away from here it's enough power to run a canteen kitchen that serves roughly 800 meals per day aside from energy the plant creates another valuable byproduct fertilizer farmers who sell their Wares at the market buy it back and spread it on the same Fields where their vegetables grow by using this fertilizer their soils are also getting better their crop seeds are better and the crops are being sold at higher cost because organic vegetables and all very costly nowadays you know organic rice and all these things Dr Rayo a scientist on the project is already building five more plants around the city and it isn't limited to vegetables biogas can be produced from any organic material including animal and human feces so if biogas can be locally sourced cuts down on solid waste and reduces emissions why aren't we all doing this because in most countries it's still cheaper to keep burning fossil fuels in North America biogas costs nearly five times more than Natural Gas now you can't compete with what you call gas in the United States if it's 20 cents a gallon this Gap is smaller in places like Asia where the difference in price is less than two dollars per unit a lot of people a lot of state governments who thinking about setting up these projects have suddenly uh understood that yes it's possible to do it yes there are Technologies which are indigenous which are built in India that can work for them the world's biggest biogas plant was recently built in Denmark and new facilities are being built elsewhere in Europe and Africa an Israeli company sells a product to make biogas in your backyard [Music] biogas will never replace natural gas there's just not enough waste to keep up with the demand for electricity but it does something that natural gas can't it helps reduce landfill waste and it's a huge missed opportunity in the United States which throws out between 30 and 40 percent of all food even the farmers who lose money when they can't sell their produce believe biogas is better than just throwing it away and the engineers on the bowenpali project are hopeful that its success will inspire others so these projects have to happen you know for us to make life more sustainable not just for ourselves but for let's say even 20 years or 10 years down the line the scenario needs to be a little better in Sierra Leone entrepreneur alhaji saraj ba also hopes to inspire others to switch from wood-based charcoal to briquettes made from coconut waste this squishy sludge could hold an answer to a deadly problem alhaji lost his adoptive family in a Mudslide when he was 17. disasters like these have become more common as deforestation increases and tree roots which hold back the soil during increasingly intense storms begin to disappear alhaji hopes to save trees by making and selling his own alternative fuel source bio brickets how to prevent deforestation because they are produced form biomass waste they are not produced from wood coconuts are one of freetown's favorite on-the-go snacks vendors end the day stuck with heaps of shells that they need to get rid of somehow and that costs money this was supposed to be waste it needed to be transport to dump this thing now I'm going to pick it up for free alhaji says his company Rogue Style Trading collects about two metric tons of coconut waste per week he's aiming for 10 tons by the end of 2022. so this is the backbone of our products this is well for us workers clean the husks and shells and dry them for about a week next they fire them inside this steel drum it's carbonized for like three four hours we put the fire out using water we have to wait for them to get dried they pulverize the charred coconuts into a fine powder and add water plus a secret ingredient to bind it all together the mixing is very challenging so the whole process depends on the mix a slight mistake on the formula you have to start all over again the extruder pushes out slimy rectangular logs that will need to dry for three to four days these ones are destined for shisha pipes in fact people who smoke hookah are his best customers these days Rook sole trading can produce about half a metric ton of briquettes in a day and they bring in as much as forty five hundred dollars on a good month we are the best selling briquette you can find our bracket in most of the supermarkets in town they go for 70 cents per kilogram that's four times more expensive than the common wood-based charcoal but they burn at least four times as long alhaji's next big challenge is to grow his sales to reach people who will use his coconut briquettes for cooking fuel instead of cutting down trees it's not easy but it takes time it's very tough to build something great if it was not tough everybody would have done it so he has 10 full-time employees and up to 40 part-timers depending on the season and about a year and a half ago he expanded his business Rogue Soul trading raises and sells chickens too his mother says he's wanted to be an entrepreneur since he was a kid what they did they look Facebook but that all felt very far away when alhaji suddenly became the breadwinner for his family at age 12. um he left his village hoping to make money to send home to his mother and sister I was just this kid who wanted to become somebody but I was not thinking straight I thought that it is just okay for me to move to Freedom so without thinking about where am I gonna stay who's gonna feed me who's gonna take care of me but I moved he lived on the streets for four years until he found a steady job and an adoptive family who took him in seven to eight months after my adoption I lost my my family that I would live in during the mudslide over 1100 people died and three thousand more lost their homes alhaji was left with just a few dollars to his name but he was desperate to do something to stop the deadly mudslides in the decade before the tragedy mudslides in Africa had already claimed thousands of lives one of the reasons that cozumo slide is the vast amount of deforestation because the roots helps to keep the soil Farm ohati began obsessively researching ways to stop deforestation he found YouTube videos of entrepreneurs from around the world making biomass briquettes to replace wood and charcoal he started saving money for an expensive mechanical extruder and perfecting his recipe so outstanding that it can bones for like four hours it emits less smoke he pitched his business idea at a Harvard competition in 2020 and won awards there and at the United Nations and he recently landed new customers in Germany in the UK foreign but most people in Freetown still cook with wood you just can't walk up to somebody and be like hey this is new this is different from what you've been using so it's a bit tough but we'll get there one day alhaji isn't the only one creating charcoal alternatives in Argentina Jose Alberto ardenberry and his wife Christina make bio logs using waste from Apple and pear cider three rivers run through altovalle creating a patch of fertile ground perfect for growing apples and pears each year the country's apple cider industry alone creates about 75 000 metric tons of leftovers this fruit waste is called pumice and it's the heart of Jose's business biot it all started with a dried piece he took home to run some tests on foreign could be used for fires but the real challenge was figuring out how to turn tons of slushy fruit into solid logs he had lots to experiment with since cider makers like Marcelo Garcia are usually happy to have someone take it off their hands ome [Applause] making this cider starts with fruit that would have otherwise gone to waste there is on the way to the grinder the fruit travels through the factory and channels of water a belt of buckets lifts the fruit to a mill that crushes it is but the promise can't get too dry or it won't move smoothly through the machinery so the cidery adds water back into the mixture is Marcelo says the promise has lots of uses like composting Heating and making vinegar [Music] the biggest problem is moving the wet heavy mixture Jose gets promise delivered to his property by the truckload he's considered many ways to get that water out so far the cheapest option is simply dumping pumice on the ground and waiting a few days then a worker uses a bulldozer to move the gunk into a specialized machine is with the help of a tractor the machine dispenses a line of pumice onto the ground and slices it into brick shapes consistency Jose piles up the dry pieces he often tries out other systems like trying smaller batches in a rectangular mold the mold could help him make thinner bricks that don't need to be flipped foreign he's considered making other products like animal feed but right now he only sells the so-called biologs he founded biot with his wife Christina is she helps with the marketing and sales side of the business [Music] Jose says their different skills make them a good match foreign she sells the logs to some local businesses and to people who use them at home traditional Argentine barbecues or Asados feedback to the 16th century nowadays lots of people use charcoal but some say wood gives me the best flavor so it's popular with restaurants doesn't taste any different is I don't know Beyond logs provide about the same amount of energy as regular firewood and burning them has about the same effect on air quality Jose says it costs the same too and the business is profitable because costs are low customers have to come to his farm to pick up the product that way though in 2019 Jose and Christina supplied the local government with biot which gave it out to low-income households but elections brought in a new government that didn't renew the deal leaving them with almost 100 metric tons of extra inventory Christina says their current processes are slow and difficult to scale up but Jose thinks the technology will become more popular so professionally no matter what he's proud to leave behind a legacy of invention foreign [Laughter] over in Indonesia one Community is powering homes in a different way converting stinky tofu Wastewater into home cooking fuel in a country that struggles to provide access to energy this tofu biogas has become an important alternative the inside of the oji tofu Factory is hot and steamy with a sour odor that you can smell from outside it's one of more than 230 tofu makers in sumadong an area of West Java famous for this product but all that tofu comes at a smelly price almost every step of making tofu generates Wastewater when that flows into nearby streams the acidic runoff can kill off fish and crops and has the organic material dissolved and it decomposes it produces ammonia gas tofu starts with dried beans that are measured out and soaked Yusuf has been making tofu here for 18 years he grinds the soaked beans to prepare them for cooking foreign paste Cooks in giant cauldrons workers stir the mixture until it's just right then they strain the slurry through cheesecloth excess water collects in drains what's left is soy milk and a steaming pile of Pulp called dregs foreign adding vinegar curdles the soy milk the bean curds go into wooden molds heavy weights squeeze out any of the remaining liquid making just one kilogram of tofu generates 33 liters of liquid waste containing whey and vinegar just five years ago the tofu plant discharged everything into the nearby River but now things are different data [Music] is pipes carry Wastewater directly from the cluster of tofu factories to a nearby biogas plant foreign [Music] has been producing biogas here since the plant opened in 2017. the facility treats some water to be released back into the river another pipeline carries more concentrated waste to collect in a holding pond the six tall black tanks turn waste into biogas foreign the Wastewater gets pumped into the first reactor from the holding pond then technicians introduce anaerobic bacteria which don't require oxygen to break down organic material as the microbes munch on soy proteins the series of six digesters produces methane a gas that can be used as fuel the whole fermentation process takes about 20 days but technicians feed new biomass into the reactors every day leftover solids can be used as fertilizers designed and built this plant in sumadon as well as others across the country is in the last 40 years Indonesia has built almost 50 000 biogas plants while the Indonesian government funds some facilities like this this particular plant is owned collectively by the community larger plants in other areas also turn biogas into electricity the country's huge appetite for tofu means there's a lot of opportunity for growth foreign supplies 56 households with a direct line of biogas and it has the capacity to provide even more one of those homes belongs to deda hidayah and her family today she's cooking tofu with gas made from tofu waste but this circular model has its limitations tofu Wastewater needs to be generated collected and fermented every day to keep the flow of biogas going because of the working hours at the factory biogas from the plant only runs to homes for a few hours in the mornings and afternoons some Indonesians do have access to Natural Gas but building pipelines across the country's 17 000 islands is a challenge about 60 percent of its energy comes from coal at the G20 Summit in November a combination of wealthy countries and private institutions pledged 20 billion dollars toward helping Indonesia wean itself off the fossil fuel small biogas plants like this one could play a key role and while they can't provide electricity or cooking fuel everywhere they can help communities make something good out of a stinky situation foreign story from The Insider business World Wide waste team we want to bring you more stories that take a look at garbage and the creative ways people deal with it if you enjoyed this video please like And subscribe we also read all the comments if you have an idea for a video you'd like to see let us know you just watch excerpts from some stories we've done about food waste being used as fuel click here for the full episodes [Music]

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,027,678

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, food waste, World Wide Waste, biogas

Id: alljc5elqqw

Length: 27min 0sec (1620 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023