Dealing with waste is a huge challenge around the world but it’s particularly acute in tiny countries like Singapore.
Millions of tonnes of rubbish are disposed each year – and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of that, is food waste.
The BBC’s Charlotte Glennie takes a look at one initiative aimed at converting the waste, to good use.
Singapore’s most iconic resort is home to dozens of restaurants, hundreds of hotel rooms, a casino, shops and a convention center. And what that means is loads and loads of food waste.
Marina Bay Sands won’t say how much food it thinks it’s throwing out every day but suffice to say it’s a lot. So, in an effort to combat that problem it has installed 5 big food digesters which are turning some of that waste into water.
According to Kevin Teng, Head of Sustainability, “the Marina Bay Sands generates a lot of pre-consumer prep food waste because of the volumes we have on the property. For example, just last weekend we had 14 weddings and were a full house – 2,600 rooms filled. Because of that we can digest and we have digested up to 2,500 kilograms of a day of clean segregated prep food waste. All you have to do is segregate your food waste, we then put it in the machine, the lifter dumps it inside, there are enzymes and a bacteria cocktail that digests the food.”
It’s like a giant mechanical stomach and out the other end comes grey water.
But still the majority of Singapore’s hundreds of thousands of tonnes of annual food waste is sent to landfill or incinerated. With clear implications for the environment the push is on for more companies to look for alternatives.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36769085