Fuelling the Future with Renewable Energy

Turning food scraps into energy may be hard to imagine, but it’s a game-changing process that’s transforming how New Zealand manages waste. MDC’s long-term goal is to use our own anaerobic digester at the Manawatū Resource Recovery Park in Feilding to process food scraps alongside separated industrial wastewater streams. In the meantime, we’ve partnered with Ecogas in Reporoa to process all food scraps we collect.

What happens to my food scraps once they are collected?

Ecogas is a food waste to bio energy facility in Reporoa that will accept the food scraps and use anaerobic digestion to create renewable energy such as heat and biogas. Manawatū District Council’s long term goal is to use our own anaerobic digester to process food scraps then in turn provide renewable energy back to the community through MDC’s partnership with Powerco.

What is anaerobic digestion?

Anaerobic digestion is a process that breaks down organic matter with bacteria in the absence of oxygen and produces by-products such as digestate (solids) and biogas. These by-products can be used as agricultural fertilisers, and to generate heat (and sometimes electricity) from captured gases, notably methane.

We are trying to save emissions and yet we are transporting scraps to Reporoa?

The emissions from transporting food scraps have been compared to the emissions created by sending scraps to a landfill - both by New Zealand's Ministry for the Environment and other international studies. It’s been found that for every tonne of food scraps transported in a modern truck, the emissions savings from anaerobic digestion outweigh transport emissions unless the load is hauled more than 5,000 kilometres. Reporoa is 260km away.