How wasted food is used as Fuel

we throw away 1.3 billion tons of food

every year and as that trash piles up

entrepreneurs all over the world are

inventing ways to use that waste as fuel

like the men in Argentina

turning waste from a Cider Mill into

what he calls biologs used for barbecues

for the town in Indonesia using stinky

runoff from tofu factories to power gas

stoves

and the inventor in Sierra Leone who

turns coconut shells into briquettes I

was like it's either it works or it

works it needs to work we traveled

around the globe to find out how people

are getting energy from worldwide food

waste

at the bowenpali market in Hyderabad

India 10 tons of food go unsold each day

but instead of going to a landfill it's

turned into electricity that will power

street lights buildings and a kitchen

that preps meals for 800 people

the first step is to chop up larger

vegetables and load them onto a conveyor

belt

some of the vegetables are spoiled

others are thrown away because it costs

Farmers too much to transport them back

home

the conveyor belt carries the material

to a shredder which further breaks down

the food into smaller more uniform

particles

in a single day it handles the same

amount of vegetables that 150 Indians

eat in a year

a grinder crushes the mixture into pulp

which is pumped through underground

tanks and into two digesters

so another big digesters basically have

a bacteria which have operated the

absence of oxygen or anaerobic bacteria

and they actually eat essentially the

food base that we are putting in there

and give out methane and carbon dioxide

any organic materials emit these Planet

warming gases as they decompose

but the massive amount of food waste

makes landfills the third largest source

of human-caused methane emissions just

behind fossil fuels and agriculture

burning biogas to make electricity is a

way to harvest those gases before they

enter the atmosphere

at bowenpali the fuel can be stored

locally in four huge balloons until it's

ready to use

and it goes all the way to the kitchen

which is about roughly 400 500 meters

away from here

it's enough power to run a canteen

kitchen that serves roughly 800 meals

per day

aside from energy the plant creates

another valuable byproduct

fertilizer

farmers who sell their Wares at the

market buy it back and spread it on the

same Fields where their vegetables grow

by using this fertilizer their soils are

also getting better their crop seeds are

better and the crops are being sold at

higher cost because organic vegetables

and all very costly nowadays you know

organic rice and all these things

Dr Rayo a scientist on the project is

already building five more plants around

the city

and it isn't limited to vegetables

biogas can be produced from any organic

material including animal and human

feces

so if biogas can be locally sourced cuts

down on solid waste and reduces

emissions why aren't we all doing this

because in most countries it's still

cheaper to keep burning fossil fuels in

North America biogas costs nearly five

times more than Natural Gas

now you can't compete

with

what you call gas in the United States

if it's 20 cents a gallon this Gap is

smaller in places like Asia where the

difference in price is less than two

dollars per unit

a lot of people a lot of state

governments who thinking about setting

up these projects have suddenly uh

understood that yes it's possible to do

it yes there are Technologies which are

indigenous which are built in India that

can work for them the world's biggest

biogas plant was recently built in

Denmark

and new facilities are being built

elsewhere in Europe and Africa

an Israeli company sells a product to

make biogas in your backyard

[Music]

biogas will never replace natural gas

there's just not enough waste to keep up

with the demand for electricity

but it does something that natural gas

can't it helps reduce landfill waste and

it's a huge missed opportunity in the

United States which throws out between

30 and 40 percent of all food

even the farmers who lose money when

they can't sell their produce believe

biogas is better than just throwing it

away

and the engineers on the bowenpali

project are hopeful that its success

will inspire others so these projects

have to happen you know for us to make

life more sustainable not just for

ourselves but for let's say even 20

years or 10 years down the line the

scenario needs to be a little better

in Sierra Leone entrepreneur alhaji

saraj ba also hopes to inspire others to

switch from wood-based charcoal to

briquettes made from coconut waste

this squishy sludge could hold an answer

to a deadly problem

alhaji lost his adoptive family in a

Mudslide when he was 17.

disasters like these have become more

common as deforestation increases and

tree roots which hold back the soil

during increasingly intense storms begin

to disappear

alhaji hopes to save trees by making and

selling his own alternative fuel source

bio brickets how to prevent

deforestation because they are produced

form biomass waste they are not produced

from wood

coconuts are one of freetown's favorite

on-the-go snacks

vendors end the day stuck with heaps of

shells that they need to get rid of

somehow and that costs money

this was supposed to be waste it needed

to be transport to dump this thing

now I'm going to pick it up for free

alhaji says his company Rogue Style

Trading collects about two metric tons

of coconut waste per week he's aiming

for 10 tons by the end of 2022.

so this is the backbone of our products

this is well for us workers clean the

husks and shells and dry them for about

a week next they fire them inside this

steel drum it's carbonized for like

three four hours

we put the fire out using water we have

to wait for them to get dried

they pulverize the charred coconuts into

a fine powder and add water plus a

secret ingredient to bind it all

together

the mixing is very challenging so the

whole process depends on the mix a

slight mistake on the formula you have

to start all over again

the extruder pushes out slimy

rectangular logs that will need to dry

for three to four days

these ones are destined for shisha pipes

in fact people who smoke hookah are his

best customers these days

Rook sole trading can produce about half

a metric ton of briquettes in a day and

they bring in as much as forty five

hundred dollars on a good month we are

the best selling briquette you can find

our bracket in most of the supermarkets

in town

they go for 70 cents per kilogram that's

four times more expensive than the

common wood-based charcoal but they burn

at least four times as long

alhaji's next big challenge is to grow

his sales to reach people who will use

his coconut briquettes for cooking fuel

instead of cutting down trees it's not

easy but it takes time it's very tough

to build something great if it was not

tough everybody would have done it so

he has 10 full-time employees and up to

40 part-timers depending on the season

and about a year and a half ago he

expanded his business

Rogue Soul trading raises and sells

chickens too

his mother says he's wanted to be an

entrepreneur since he was a kid what

they did they look Facebook

but that all felt very far away when

alhaji suddenly became the breadwinner

for his family at age 12.

um

he left his village hoping to make money

to send home to his mother and sister

I was just this kid who wanted to become

somebody but I was not thinking straight

I thought that it is just okay for me to

move to Freedom so without thinking

about where am I gonna stay who's gonna

feed me who's gonna take care of me but

I moved

he lived on the streets for four years

until he found a steady job and an

adoptive family who took him in

seven to eight months after my adoption

I lost my my family that I would live in

during the mudslide

over 1100 people died and three thousand

more lost their homes

alhaji was left with just a few dollars

to his name

but he was desperate to do something to

stop the deadly mudslides

in the decade before the tragedy

mudslides in Africa had already claimed

thousands of lives one of the reasons

that cozumo slide is the vast amount of

deforestation because the roots helps to

keep the soil Farm ohati began

obsessively researching ways to stop

deforestation he found YouTube videos of

entrepreneurs from around the world

making biomass briquettes to replace

wood and charcoal

he started saving money for an expensive

mechanical extruder and perfecting his

recipe

so outstanding that it can bones for

like four hours it emits less smoke he

pitched his business idea at a Harvard

competition in 2020 and won awards there

and at the United Nations and he

recently landed new customers in Germany

in the UK

foreign

but most people in Freetown still cook

with wood

you just can't walk up to somebody and

be like hey this is new this is

different from what you've been using so

it's a bit tough but we'll get there one

day

alhaji isn't the only one creating

charcoal alternatives

in Argentina Jose Alberto ardenberry and

his wife Christina make bio logs using

waste from Apple and pear cider

three rivers run through altovalle

creating a patch of fertile ground

perfect for growing apples and pears

each year the country's apple cider

industry alone creates about 75 000

metric tons of leftovers this fruit

waste is called pumice and it's the

heart of Jose's business biot

it all started with a dried piece he

took home to run some tests on

foreign

could be used for fires

but the real challenge was figuring out

how to turn tons of slushy fruit into

solid logs

he had lots to experiment with

since cider makers like Marcelo Garcia

are usually happy to have someone take

it off their hands

ome

[Applause]

making this cider starts with fruit that

would have otherwise gone to waste

there is

on the way to the grinder the fruit

travels through the factory and channels

of water

a belt of buckets lifts the fruit to a

mill that crushes it

is

but the promise can't get too dry or it

won't move smoothly through the

machinery

so the cidery adds water back into the

mixture

is

Marcelo says the promise has lots of

uses like composting Heating and making

vinegar

[Music]

the biggest problem is moving the wet

heavy mixture

Jose gets promise delivered to his

property by the truckload

he's considered many ways to get that

water out

so far the cheapest option is simply

dumping pumice on the ground and waiting

a few days

then a worker uses a bulldozer to move

the gunk into a specialized machine

is

with the help of a tractor the machine

dispenses a line of pumice onto the

ground and slices it into brick shapes

consistency

Jose piles up the dry pieces

he often tries out other systems like

trying smaller batches in a rectangular

mold

the mold could help him make thinner

bricks that don't need to be flipped

foreign

he's considered making other products

like animal feed but right now he only

sells the so-called biologs

he founded biot with his wife Christina

is

she helps with the marketing and sales

side of the business

[Music]

Jose says their different skills make

them a good match

foreign

she sells the logs to some local

businesses and to people who use them at

home

traditional Argentine barbecues or

Asados feedback to the 16th century

nowadays lots of people use charcoal but

some say wood gives me the best flavor

so it's popular with restaurants

doesn't taste any different is

I don't know Beyond logs provide about

the same amount of energy as regular

firewood and burning them has about the

same effect on air quality

Jose says it costs the same too

and the business is profitable because

costs are low

customers have to come to his farm to

pick up the product that way though

in 2019 Jose and Christina supplied the

local government with biot which gave it

out to low-income households

but elections brought in a new

government that didn't renew the deal

leaving them with almost 100 metric tons

of extra inventory

Christina says their current processes

are slow and difficult to scale up

but Jose thinks the technology will

become more popular so

professionally

no matter what he's proud to leave

behind a legacy of invention

foreign

[Laughter]

over in Indonesia one Community is

powering homes in a different way

converting stinky tofu Wastewater into

home cooking fuel

in a country that struggles to provide

access to energy this tofu biogas has

become an important alternative

the inside of the oji tofu Factory

is hot and steamy with a sour odor that

you can smell from outside

it's one of more than 230 tofu makers in

sumadong an area of West Java famous for

this product but all that tofu comes at

a smelly price

almost every step of making tofu

generates Wastewater

when that flows into nearby streams the

acidic runoff can kill off fish and

crops

and has the organic material dissolved

and it decomposes it produces ammonia

gas

tofu starts with dried beans that are

measured out and soaked

Yusuf has been making tofu here for 18

years

he grinds the soaked beans to prepare

them for cooking

foreign

paste Cooks in giant cauldrons

workers stir the mixture until it's just

right

then they strain the slurry through

cheesecloth

excess water collects in drains

what's left is soy milk and a steaming

pile of Pulp called dregs

foreign

adding vinegar curdles the soy milk

the bean curds go into wooden molds

heavy weights squeeze out any of the

remaining liquid

making just one kilogram of tofu

generates 33 liters of liquid waste

containing whey and vinegar

just five years ago the tofu plant

discharged everything into the nearby

River but now things are different

data

[Music]

is

pipes carry Wastewater directly from the

cluster of tofu factories to a nearby

biogas plant

foreign

[Music]

has been producing biogas here since the

plant opened in 2017.

the facility treats some water to be

released back into the river

another pipeline carries more

concentrated waste to collect in a

holding pond

the six tall black tanks turn waste into

biogas

foreign

the Wastewater gets pumped into the

first reactor from the holding pond

then technicians introduce anaerobic

bacteria which don't require oxygen to

break down organic material

as the microbes munch on soy proteins

the series of six digesters produces

methane a gas that can be used as fuel

the whole fermentation process takes

about 20 days but technicians feed new

biomass into the reactors every day

leftover solids can be used as

fertilizers

designed and built this plant in sumadon

as well as others across the country

is

in the last 40 years Indonesia has built

almost 50 000 biogas plants

while the Indonesian government funds

some facilities like this this

particular plant is owned collectively

by the community

larger plants in other areas also turn

biogas into electricity

the country's huge appetite for tofu

means there's a lot of opportunity for

growth

foreign

supplies 56 households with a direct

line of biogas and it has the capacity

to provide even more

one of those homes belongs to deda

hidayah and her family

today she's cooking tofu with gas made

from tofu waste

but this circular model has its

limitations

tofu Wastewater needs to be generated

collected and fermented every day to

keep the flow of biogas going

because of the working hours at the

factory biogas from the plant only runs

to homes for a few hours in the mornings

and afternoons

some Indonesians do have access to

Natural Gas

but building pipelines across the

country's 17 000 islands is a challenge

about 60 percent of its energy comes

from coal

at the G20 Summit in November a

combination of wealthy countries and

private institutions pledged 20 billion

dollars toward helping Indonesia wean

itself off the fossil fuel

small biogas plants like this one could

play a key role

and while they can't provide electricity

or cooking fuel everywhere they can help

communities make something good out of a

stinky situation