Turning waste into energy

In the early 1990s, not long after I started work at the International Dairy Foods Association, I was sent around the country to tour various dairy plant operations in order to better acquaint myself with dairy processing and the challenges associated with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations.

Many of my visits were quite memorable. In Michigan, Country Fresh impressed me with its emergency rescue system that was developed in response to OSHA’s promulgation of a confined-space entry rule. In St. Louis, I was impressed by the hospitality of Ice Cream Specialties and their encouragement of me to eat as many ice cream novelties as I wanted. Even though I was an adult I can tell you that was a kid-in-a-candy store moment.

Out west, I visited the Golden Cheese Co. of California. This was the first cheese plant I ever visited and my first exposure to deriving energy from waste. My recollection is that the plant was built in the 1980s as a response to the oil crisis of the 1970s. At that time it was envisioned that dairy processing waste, whey in particular, could be turned into energy in the form of ethanol. While I could be wrong in my recollection, I believe Golden Cheese of California’s operations were envisioned to produce ethanol as a primary product and cheese as a by-product. To say the least, I found the concept fascinating and was very impressed with what I saw.

When I left California I was sure that what I had just seen was the start of a movement that would take off at an amazing pace. Alternative energy from nonpetroleum sources was such a great idea. Sadly, I was wrong.

Fast forward about 20 years to the first Sustainability Summit in Bentonville, Ark., where again I felt the energy (or should I say excitement?) about alternative energy. This time the excitement was about dairy power on the farm: energy from methane digesters. I moderated a panel that included Dennis Haubenschild of Haubenschild Family Farms, Princeton, Minn., who spoke about the anaerobic digester he installed in the late 1990s.

While I have always been a fan of technology and a big fan of nonpetroleum based energy, I think what impressed me most was Dennis himself and his decision to pursue digester technology. Dennis knew it would be a challenge and that the road would have its fair share of bumps, but he quite simply summed up his decision as being the right thing to do. It was clear at the summit that digester technology was the right thing to do. It is finally starting to catch on for a variety of reasons.

In February of this year, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy released a report prepared by Informa Economics, entitled the “National Market Value of Anaerobic Digester Products.” Informa’s conclusion is that anaerobic digesters can be a profitable and sustainable solution for dairy operations.

What is different now — and what is changing the game — is the realization that additional and different waste streams from a variety of sources greatly enhance the production of methane and that it isn’t just the methane that has value. Haubenschild learned on his farm that using recycled newspaper bedding instead of straw resulted in significantly more methane production. He also learned that the end product digestate has value as a soil amendment.