In the continuous effort to look for sustainable source of energy, one company in the United Kingdom has devised a way to power its factories using waste mashed potato. England's third largest food company, 2 Sisters Food Group, will unveil its new electricity generator this week.
As reported in Foodbeast, the parent company of some of the UK's biggest food brands including Fox's Bisuits and Goodfella's pizza, has a new bio-refinery that is reported to use leftover potato parts to fuel their Carlisle plant. This includes peelings and potato wastes from factory's mashed potato and pie manufacturing lines.
Meanwhile The Guardian reports that the new bio-refinery in its Carlisle factory is said to produce 3,500 megawatt hours (MWh) each year in electricity. That is equivalent to 5,000 MWh in steam to give power to the factory. That is enough power to support 850 homes.
The company announced this news last Monday as they disclosed plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2018, decrease food waste by 5 percent each year, attain zero waste to landfill status across its facilities and reduce water use by 8 percent from last year until 2018. If their current project in Carlisle plant proves successful, the company hopes to apply the technology to the rest of its 42 factories.
The company takes its responsibility to the environment seriously as Andrew Edlin said in a statement. The group sustainability director for 2 Sister Food Group said, "The bio-refinery is a world-first for the food industry, using a new type of super-efficient technology to generate energy from potato waste. We are looking to use this system to open up to 10 further energy plants at other 2 Sisters factories over the coming three years, using potato and other food waste to generate energy and steam."
"We live in a world affected by a perfect storm of population growth, resource depletion, rising energy costs, financial pressure on communities and unprecedented demands on land use and availability. These issues affect all our people, partners and businesses, and to ensure our continued success we must face these new challenges."
