If the adage is true that if you make it in New York, then you can make it anywhere, biogas advocates should pay attention to a new initiative announced in the Big Apple. Rather than continuing to ship food waste to out-of-state landfills, it was recently proposed that instead, such waste from 200 public schools will be delivered to Greenpoint, Brooklyn to be turned into biogas, which in turn would be used to heat nearly 2,500 New York Homes. Mother Nature Network has the scoop, which it has dubbed “fork to furnace.” (A term much preferred to The Huffington Post’s interpretation.)
The pilot plan is strategy to word on New York’s PlaNYC goal of reducing municipal greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2017, and requires major partnerships with Waste Management and the utility National Grid. Currently the Brooklyn facility, the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, treats 250 million gallons of wastewater each day, MNN reports, and 40 percent of the biogas generated in its digesters is used in National Grid’s distribution network. The proposed biogas purification system has a completion date of 2015. If the program is a success, the waste collection will be expanded from the first 2 — schools to an additional 200 schools and 100,000 homes, per MNN. Read More