How a city's food waste heats homes and businesses

Almost three thousand tonnes of food waste has been gathered from doorsteps in Derby since the start of a new scheme in April.

The government has told councils they must offer a waste food collection service to homes, with the waste collected used to create biogas and fertiliser.

Food waste is transported to Severn Trent Green Power's plant at Spondon in Derby. There it is shredded and has plastic packaging removed before being mixed with water and pumped to one of the site's five anaerobic digesters.

The process removes the need for waste to be incinerated or sent to landfill as well as providing gas for homes and businesses.

Severn Trent's Jessica Beare said the food waste was heated after being pumped to an anaerobic digester.

"We take it up to body temperature and stir the contents and it releases biogas, just like it would in the human stomach," she said.

"The food waste breaks down, the gas is captured and we then convert that to biomethane on site."

Howard Forster from gas distributor Cadent has explained how it is then fed into the national grid which supplies millions of homes with gas for cooking and heating.

"Anaerobic digestion is an old technology, primordial in fact," said Forster.

"It's the very, very early stages of an industry that has the potential to grow tenfold; eventually our network of plants could produce enough gas to look after the whole of Derbyshire."

Tracey Turner from Alvaston in Derby was initially pessimistic about the scheme but has since been won over, explaining how it has shown her just how much food waste homes can produce.

The 66-year-old receptionist for a travel company is a keen baker and cooks for husband Adrian, 68, a big fan of her roast dinners.

The waste caddy on the kitchen cabinet contains peelings from carrots and potatoes, trimmings from French beans and egg shells from the moist banana bread she baked for visitors.

"Initially I was pessimistic about collecting food waste but once the caddies were delivered and we started using them, it just fit in really well," the mother-of-two said.

Adrian is also a fan. "There's not much which can't go in apart from cooking oil. Tea bags, clippings, cuttings, peelings," he said.

"Scrapings from the plate but there aren't many of those because we eat what's on the plate, that's old school isn't it?"

Ndukwe Onuoha, a Derby city councillor who has championed the scheme, said it had helped to reduce the amount of food waste put into black wheelie bins.

"We've reduced the amount that was spent on the general waste by about a third and almost 3,000 tonnes of food waste has been collected since we started," he said.

"We also want to look at what it saves for residents, who have also reduced the amount of food waste because households spend about £1,000 a year on food that is wasted."

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