US (CA): Digester turns supermarket waste into fertilizer
It is the brainchild of Dan Morash, founder of California Safe Soil, one of the companies with a presence at the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology in Oldtown Salinas.
CSS is now building its second plant in McClellan, near Sacramento, to produce its products, Harvest to Harvest, or H2H, and Hog Heaven, an animal feed at commercial scale. The company is partnering with the Save Mart supermarket chain. Save Mart stores will set aside produce that cannot be sold or donated for the digester, which mimics the human digestive system.
With help from his brother, David, a Southern California resident who who helped write the CSS business plan, Morash first set up a pilot plant outside Sacramento in 2012. It proved to be successful and CSS launched construction of its first plant, an 80,000-square-foot facility in a business park that was once McClellan Air Force Base.
Food that can’t be sold or donated is collected in bins at the supermarkets. This is food that is not putrified but simply no longer safe to eat. Trucks pick up the food and haul it to the digester, which is pending a patent. The digester is loaded and cooked with enzymes. No water is used because it is contained in the produce. The result is a nutrient-laden liquid fertilizer and a waste product used for animal feed.
“It’s what’s called biomimicry,” Morash said. “It’s exactly what happens in the stomach after lunch. How your digestive system takes food and pulls the nutrients out for use in your body. …We’re just doing that with food with precision equipment in a controlled environment so we can ensure a high-quality result.”
Read more at The Californian