Kornit Digital Ltd
Food waste is a large component of our solid waste problem. And the question
of what to do with it is a challenge for communities worldwide. The U.S. alone
generates more than 34 million tons of food waste each year. The Russian Statistical
Office Gosstat recently submitted its first official figures on food waste in
Russia. According to Gosstat, 56 kg of food is thrown away per person per year
in the Russian Federation. Much of it ends up in landfills. Food scraps are
big part of household waste, and are a problematic component of municipal waste,
creating public health, sanitation and environmental problems at each step,
beginning with internal storage and followed by truck-based collection. Burned
in waste-to-energy facilities, the high water-content of food scraps means that
their heating and burning consumes more energy than it generates; buried in
landfills, food scraps decompose and generate methane gas, which is a greenhouse
gas. With waste produced across all sectors of the economy, and throughout supply
chains, it is important to look for opportunities to prevent waste from arising
in the first place and to manage the waste that does arise more effectively.
The premise behind the use of a Food Waste Disposal Unit is to effectively
regard food scraps as liquid (averaging 70% water, like human waste), and use
existing infrastructure (underground sewers and wastewater treatment plants)
for its management.
For a long time, landfill has been the main disposal method for municipal wastes
in Russia. However, there is strong pressure to reduce the use of land filling
as demonstrated by the increasingly stringent regulations which limit untreated
waste going to landfill. It is being agreed that the use of FWD (Food Waste
Disposal units) is beneficial in reducing the quantity of biodegradable wastes
going to landfill. Previous studies in Japan found that FWDs could reduce current
waste production by 40%.
In Russian Federation such reduction is unlikely but it would translate into
significant reduction in the costs of curbside waste collection, transportation,
treatment and disposal, generating substantial savings for local authorities.
Previous studies have reported that addition of food waste in the sewer could
cause considerable modifications of the resulting wastewater. Such modifications
can substantially improve biological removal of phosphorus and nitrogen during
wastewater treatment and reduce costs for purchase of chemicals and/or additional
carbon for phosphorus removal (Battistoni etal. 2007). In addition increased
organic loads in wastewater can generate biogas during anaerobicwastewater treatment.
Our food waste disposers provide a convenient and environmentally friendly
alternative to transporting leftovers to landfills. Plus, capable wastewater
treatment plants can even recycle food scraps into energy and fertilizer.
Durable. Practical. And environmentally responsible. A recent Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA) of common ways to dispose of food scraps reported that disposers can help
reduce global warming potential vs. landfills and in some cases, can even aid
in energy production at the wastewater treatment plant.
