Wastewater treatment in the food industry and mitigating climate change

All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.

President Barack Obama

Wastewater treatment in the food industry and mitigating climate change

Consumers have driven the food market to produce higher quality products, get rid of dangerous pesticides such as DDT, and produce organic and naturally grown foods. As this proactive trend continues well into the 21^st century, it is becoming the norm that companies will have to be carbon neutral. An entire new corporate culture regarding the mitigation and off-set of greenhouse gas net emissions is becoming a reality.

The key to offset and mitigate climate change is to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and to use renewable energy alternatives that will not contribute greenhouse gases to the carbon cycle. This can be achieved with cost-effective technologies and it is where anaerobic wastewater treatment comes into play.

The core advantage of using anaerobic wastewater treatment is that it allows us to produce biogas (typically 65% methane). In many food industry applications, biogas is burnt and utilized to produce heat or electricity that will not increase greenhouse gas net emissions, and reduces operating costs at the wastewater treatment plant and at the production facility.