In this post: some real clean-ups!
Energy from a Cheese by-product,
Local Rubbish Removal with Recycling – an excellent small business,
Municipal WASTE to resource – UBQ,
Sewage WASTE to a resource – Ingelia,
WASTE Glass in polymer concrete,
factory WASTE into new food and drink – Practical Innovation & O. Vine
WASTED SPACE – Growing Underground
A Waste Lab
Producing Energy From a Cheese by-product
Iona Capital, environmental fund specialists, has secured a deal with Wensleydale Creamery to produce over 10,000 MWh of energy/year from a by-product of cheese making.
The agreement will see Iona’s Leeming Biogas plant, North Yorkshire, UK, use whey permeate (a by-product produced during the manufacture of world-famous Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese) to process ~one million cubic meters of green gas. Using anaerobic digestion, the venture’s green gas will produce 10,000 MWh of thermal power, enough to heat 800 homes per year.
We’re thrilled to share this exciting story. Our passion for cheese-making is now helping to heat homes in our area, thanks to the conversion of leftover whey (which is a versatile by-product of cheese-making) into renewable-energy!
Local Rubbish Removal with Recycling makes an excellent small business
* https://www.junktaxi.co.uk/ * https://www.junkhunters.co.uk/
Monday, 23 October 2000
GARBAGE COLLECTION TAKES ON A NEW IMAGE
The company Trash Taxi stresses clean and dependable service trucks. When Curtis Agius starts talking trash, people don’t cover their ears, they listen. That’s because Agius, who jumped into the trash collection business just 24 months ago, says his business is booming — he started with two trucks and already has eight.
Agius says the brilliant decorating on each of his vehicles is the key to his successful image. “We drive through subdivisions, kids just come out to look at my trucks,” he says. “Most people say they are too pretty to use for garbage.”
The company is expanding into recycling and hopes to start residential pick-up in January.
Removal with Recycling
Changing the world one load at a time was identified as the underlying driver in all our business’s activities. The Rubbish Taxi is focused on minimising the amount of rubbish and waste that goes to landfills. A significant amount of what The Rubbish Taxi collects, is not really rubbish at all.
We may not be able to get to only a “jam jar” of waste for the year, but we can all seek out small ways to keep rubbish from mounting up in our landfills.
For example, it is a common myth to think that because food breaks down, it’s fine to throw it into the recycle bin. However, too much food stuck to items contaminates the process. Such items in the bin can render a recycle bin full of items – UN-recyclable. Do your bit by throwing away rubbish-rubbish where it will not contaminate recyclable items.
Recycling is beginning to turn around and become the important part of the Circular Economy that it is. Here is a whole post on the subject!
If you start small like above…..look what you could turn into! Start with one building and work toward becoming……
an international waste recycling role model
Every single solution, every type of recycling technology is helping to conserve our planet’s natural resources.
You can never do enough to promote sustainable development and prevent climate change. Which is why we are always doing everything in our power to grow the number of materials we can recover at REMONDIS’ Lippe Plant as well as to increase the efficiency of our systems. Improving our current recycling processes is just as important here as developing new technology. Over the last few years alone, we have invested 400 million euros in the site. Our latest project has been to set up a completely new facility for treating organic material. The cascaded use of the input material to produce biogas and compost means that the whole system is even more sustainable. And that is exactly what the Lippe Plant is all about: trying to get that little bit more out of the waste that is delivered to the site.
REMONDIS’s Lippe Plant is not only one of the leading recycling centres, it is also the hub of REMONDIS’ world. It is home to the company’s head office which coordinates the REMONDIS Group’s activities all around the world. The Group can currently be found at around 900 locations in over 30 countries.
OR a national waste recycling company
the Paprec Group, France
Raw material producer of the 21st century
Saving Available Resources
In a finite world, raw mineral material is limited. By facing the fact that these resources will one day be depleted, recycling is considered the “mining of tomorrow.”
In 1995, Jean-Luc Petithuguenin left his management position at the Générale des Eaux to take over a small paper recycling company, with 45 employees and a €3,5 Million turnover.
Throughout these 25 years of existence, the Paprec Group has made close to 50 acquisitions with several goals: strengthening its existent activities and its national network, widening its range of services, opening up new markets for activity.
A Leader in Recycling
In just a few years, the little recycling company from La Courneuve has become one of the key players in the recycling world, ready to take on any recycling and waste management ventures.
Recycling:
Paper, cardboard, archives, official documents
Plastics
Wood
Metal and scraps
Construction waste
Electrical/Electronic equipment (WEEE)
Batteries
Ordinary industrial waste (OIW)
Hazardous industrial waste (HIW)
Green waste
Vehicle recycling
Rubber and tire collection and treatment
Sorting of selectively collected household waste
Environmental Services:
Collecting household waste, public bins, and sorted waste
Delegated management of waste collection and sorting facilities
Management of facilities for nonhazardous waste storage
Other services to the environment
Then there is the YUCK
– the stuff that can not be recycled to a resource – Garbage, Rubbish, Dirty, Wet, Stuff….. the bottom line landfill stuff……. What to do with this???
From municipal WASTE to resource
Rubbish Conversion by UBQ
All what’s left in the “rubbish”?
“With the food residue too,” boasts co-founder and CEO Jack ‘Tato’ Bigio, of UBQ. The company has reached 33 employees and is working on converting trashy-trash into: thermoplastic pellets from which you can make bricks, pavement, and lots more. UBQ’s resultant resource is up-cycled, bio-based thermoplastic composites which are sustainable, recyclable, and competitively priced.
This process could take us to ZERO Landfills!
It could eliminate landfills for everyone.
Using a patented conversion process, UBQ turns unsorted garbage into thermoplastic pellets for plastic manufacture. Existing manufacturers can use the pellets without retrofitting, says Mr. Bigio.
All the highly valuable materials that can be recycled; certain plastics, paper, cardboard, and metals, etc. are extracted for sale. What is left over, known as ‘Residual Waste’, including organics, dirty plastics, paper, cardboard, and diapers is what is delivered to a UBQ facility. Instead of being disposed of in a landfill dump or burned in an incinerator.
Manufacturers can use the new UBQ material to make things like: panels and pipes by extrusion. Or companies can use the pellets to make bins, pallets, boxes and flower pots by injection molding. These are products made from the more finely chopped trash. Road materials and bricks are being developed from coarser trash.
The only input into both processes: garbage.
The only output: thermoplastic UBQ material and water vapour that escapes from the drying garbage itself.
Not just on hashtag EarthDay, but every day, we envision a world where waste is never wasted.
ZERO WASTE
TU/ecomotive develops car with UBQ™
October 2020 — The design of the sixth TU/ecomotive car, Luca, was developed as a zero-waste car. The R&D team wants to show that waste can be a valuable material with a multitude of applications.
Luca’s body was manufactured by TU/ecomotive out of UBQ™ material. UBQ™ is a patented novel climate-positive material created by Israeli startup UBQ. The central value proposition of using UBQ™ is its sustainability metrics, significantly reducing and even neutralizing the carbon footprint of final applications. By diverting household waste from reaching landfills, UBQ™ prevents the emission of methane, ground water leakage and other toxins. According to Quantis, a leading provider of environmental impact assessments, every ton of UBQ™ material produced offsets 11.7 tons of CO2 equivalent, qualifying it as ‘the most climate positive thermoplastic material on the planet.”
From WASTE Water to resource
HydroChar/BioCoal – fuel or soil fertilizer
A Fuel produced with Zero Harmful Emissions – and It’s Made From Sewage
A sign of hope for the disastrous waste water systems in the developed world ! What NYC could do with this process…..
This Spanish company found a way to produce a fuel without emitting CO2 — made of sewage
- Ingelia has developed an industrial process to produce what the company calls bioCoal fuel, using sewage.
- The resulting product burns like coal, but with a reduction in CO2 emissions. The production of this product is carbon neutral or close to it.
- By turning organic waste into a bioCoal that combusts at lower CO2, Ingelia has found a much more sustainable energy source than traditional fossil coal and turned sewage and other organic wastes into an important resource.
The result of the hydrothermal carbonation process (HTC) is a slurry biofuel, which is then made into solid BioCoal. This biofuel can be used for: electrical generation, co-combustion, pelletization, direct combustion in order to obtain heat or electrical energy. OR it can be used for agriculture as “HydroChar”.
Some of the literature that I found about Ingelia’s process has confused BioChar with HydroChar. They are two different things that both can be used as soil amendments.
What is Biochar?
“Biochar is a solid material obtained from the carbonization or thermochemical conversion of biomass in an oxygen-limited environment. … It is is used as a soil amendment with the intention to improve soil functions and to reduce emissions from biomass that would otherwise naturally degrade to greenhouse gases.”
Multianalytical characterization of biochar and hydrochar produced from waste biomasses for environmental and agricultural applications May 2019 (to be published in Oct. 2019 in Chemosphere) Biochar (BC) and hydrochar (HC) are solid by-products obtained from various types of biomasses through the processes of pyrolysis and hydrothermal carbonization, respectively. Both BC and HC represent a sustainable solution for carbon sequestration and can be used as soil amendments or sorbents for organic and inorganic pollutants. However, the properties of BC and HC largely depend on feedstock and production parameters, which significantly affect their proper use. A detailed characterization of these materials is therefore needed to assess their suitability for environmental and/or agricultural applications.
Hydrochar-Amended Substrates for Production of Containerized Pine Tree Seedlings under Different Fertilization Regimes 2019 The results of this study implied that application of proper rates of hydrochar from biosludge with adjusted levels of liquid fertilizer may reduce fertilizer requirements in pine nurseries.
This could take us to ZERO Nutrients
in waste water!
Reduce Eutrophication by Lots!
Ingelia BioCoal (HydroChar) is a high quality solid bio-material, rich in organic Carbon, Hydrogen, and valuable nutrients. It offers Bioenergy and Agricultural soil amendment uses.
- For Bioenergy – The Biocoal with a calorific value in a range of 20-24 Mj/kg, and a bulk density of around 750 kg/m3, has a whole product value chain which is one of the most sustainable on the market. Using 1 ton of Ingelia bioCoal as solid fuel, replacing fossil coal brings a reduction of 2.2 kg CO2 per kg BioCoal used. Being produced from residues, the Ingelia BioCoal contributes to global emission reductions not only in its process, but also its avoidance of landfilling and subsequent combustion emissions.
- For Agriculture – The bioCoal/HydroChar is a source of carbon for the soil, and it has been already used as growing media and soil conditioner, on different plant species, resulting in increases in plant mass and fruit growth rate. The BioCoal improves soil water retention capacity with nutrients; Phosphorus, Calcium, Nitrogen, Potassium vital elements which help in a sustainable bio-economy.
A Water by-product of the Ingelia system is a liquid fertilizer:
During the hydrothermal carbonation process, water-soluble nutrients, previously contained in the fresh residue before processing, dissolve in the process water. The nutrients can thus be concentrated and used as a base to produce liquid complex fertilizers applicable for crops. The authorities have authorized the Ingelia factory in Valencia, to use the process water for citrus fertilizer in that area. The water produced is sterile and contains valuable levels of Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium, suitable for agricultural applications with low content of heavy metals.
WASTE GLASS in polymer concrete
Besides the fact that sand is becoming scarce world-wide, senior engineering lecturer Dr Riyadh Al-Ameri said, “Mined sand requires washing and grading before it is added to aggregate, cement and water to make concrete. We have found that substituting sand with ground waste glass makes the polymer concrete stronger and is a sustainable use of one type of recyclable in the domestic waste stream.”
Deakin Engineering student Dikshit Modgil worked with Melbourne-based Orca Civil Products as part of his Masters. Orca Civil Products Director, Alan Travers, said the research partnership had produced results that would be useful in taking the concept further to commercialisation. “The specific type of waste glass used in this project is unsuitable for recycling back into glass and the amount that is stockpiling is becoming a community problem,” Mr Travers said., “The concept has even more appeal to us because of predicted shortages of natural, mined sands in the medium term.”
>>Skyrocketing demand – The world is facing a global sand crisis
Sand is a key ingredient for concrete, roads, glass and electronics. Massive amounts of sand are mined for land reclamation projects, shale gas extraction and beach re-nourishment programs. Recent floods in Houston, India, Nepal and Bangladesh will add to growing global demand for sand.
>>A looming tragedy of the sand commons
Between 1900 and 2010, the global volume of natural resources used in buildings and transport infrastructure increased 23-fold. Sand and gravel are the largest portion of these primary materials and are the most extracted group of materials worldwide, exceeding fossil fuels and biomass.
WASTE-BUSTING firm turns companies’ discards into new food and drink
A sweeping global trend:
use of production waste to create products of financial value. The trend alternatively includes increasing the company’s profits which stems from the creative use of other companies’ waste, or innovation that makes it possible to produce a final product without waste – any of which moves to another product..
Tal Leizer’s company, Practical Innovation, has recently developed a new up-cycling system, or upgrading system for useless or unwanted waste at the end of production into higher-value products, for companies that seek to turn a profit while helping address the global food waste problem. Ms. Leizer says, “Most companies think only about either how to dispose of the waste more cheaply or how to produce less waste in the first place.
Her company is like a Waste Lab.
“We’re saying take this waste, and instead of paying someone to take it off your shoulders, let’s build a completely new category from this waste.”
Practical Innovation’s new service assesses a company’s supply chain, evaluates the extent of annual waste and what is being done with it, and then offers a way to develop new food and beverage products out of cast-off items, redirecting food waste into a profitable product.
One Such product is:
“The O.Vine production process captures the taste, aroma, color and antioxidants that remain in wine grape skins & seeds after making wine, designated “wine waste.” The result is a beverage unlike any other on the market; one that tastes great and that you can feel great about. I hope that after you’ve tasted O.Vine you’ll agree and make O.Vine a part of your lifestyle. ”
Anat Levi, CEO, Wine Water Ltd.
During the fine winemaking process approximately 25 % of the wine grapes used (mostly skins and seeds) become “waste” “Winery Pomace”. Not anymore at Galil Mountain Winery. In collaboration with Practical Innovation, a patent pending up-cycling process captures a useable volume of wine grape infused liquid uniquely light, dry, crisp, low calorie from the Pomace Waste. The result is alcohol free O.Vine, a deliciously refreshing wine grape infused water unlike any other beverage on the market.
WASTED SPACE turned around
Could this picture have been taken from within
an Abandoned Coal Mine near you?
Situated 33 meters underneath the streets of London in a World War II air raid shelter is Growing Underground, an urban farm. Our salad mixes are blends of mouth watering fresh herbs and salad leaves being supplied to all the major stores around London. The re-purposed air-raid shelter provides a perfectly controlled “growing environment”, allowing us to grow flavour packed, pesticide free salad leaves year-round. We employ the latest sustainable, hydroponics LED technology and thanks to our prime location food miles are greatly reduced. This gets our herbed salad mixes to London residents sooner, ensuring each tiny leaf bursts with flavour!
growing-underground.com(opens in a new tab)
Richard Ballard and Steven Dring started Growing Underground with a crowdfunding campaign from Crowdcube.
WASTE LAB
Does your company have a “waste lab” ?
What if we didn’t see waste as waste? Nature doesn’t!
Inspired by the principles of biomimicry, Kohler Co. developed the Waste LAB, a company incubator that finds new uses for manufactured waste.
Waste Becomes Opportunity.
What if waste, bound for the landfill, has hidden value we haven’t explored?
The WasteLAB is where we ask “What if?” and experiment until we find answers, until we turn waste into something meaningful.
POTTERY DRY CULL
SPENT FOUNDRY SAND
WASTE GLAZE AND ENAMEL POWDER
FOUNDRY DUST
Waste
It’s what we see when we look at our factories and see what’s left over. It’s really just something we haven’t figured out what to do with yet.
Waste doesn’t exist in nature — What if we took cues from nature and saw waste as a raw material for a new process or product? That’s what we’re trying to do with the Kohler Waste Lab.
Kohler industrial designer Monty Stauffer was invited to join the Waste Lab team in the summer of 2017. “I was told, ‘We want you to make something out of something else and we don’t know what that something is yet,’ and I thought, ‘Cool!’” Monty and his other team-members are using their collective skills and knowledge to sort and test waste materials to use in completely new products.
“The Circular Economy needs to become second nature
Theresa Millard, Waste Lab Project Manager
for everybody in the world.”
“Imagine, in the future that the word waste didn’t exist. That I think would be pretty cool”.
I searched on google for: What companies have a Waste Lab?
Kohler is the only one I found.
I believe that most companies should have a “waste lab”, big or tiny. It is not the same as a sustainability department, but a “waste lab” might be found in that company division.
Ask Kohler’s Waste Lab how they got started: “It is best if people contact us using this email: [email protected] email. As a small team – it is best for emails to come to this central location.
Thanks again,
WasteLAB team
Does your company have a “waste lab”?
Waste; Our Assurance of future Resources
– posts on the subject:
Hard-To-Recycle Waste – What Do You Have? What Are You Looking For?
Wasterush Tools! Right To The Point!
Harvesting Waste Ideas. Waste Rushes? NOW!
Mycelium In Industry – Ancient And New
– series of 15 posts on Mycelium in Industry
Industrial Zone – Closed-Loop Networking
Urban Mining ! – More Important Than Ever
Critical Minerals & Rare Elements! ….. COLOSSAL WASTE RUSH
Municiple Waste
Useful Green WASTE Business Ideas That Can Scale To Any Size You Can Use.
Anaerobic Digestion In Full Swing – #1 Waste To Energy?
CNG, LNG, RNG Fuelling Stations – #2 Waste To Energy
#3 Municipal Solid Waste – MSW To BioFuel? Yes!
#1 Leaky Toilets Are Everyones Business!
– series of 7 posts on water,sanitation,toilets
Plastic
Waste Plastic Upcycle Businesses – Opportunities, Opportunities!
– series of 5+ posts on waste plastic businesses
Jobs! With The Ocean Cleanup INTERCEPTOR™ Business!, +1000+ ECO Jobs!
COVID 19 Waste – Pick It Up Off The Street!
Printing Industry
Eco-Printing & Packaging EQUIPMENT
Thoses posts about wastes that need present action
Too Much Methane !
Wipes – Human Behavior & False Advertising
Job Vacancies In Green Companies < More Now !