On Wednesday, I went to a breakfast seminar hosted by Blake Lapthorn in Seacourt Tower. It was one of a series of such breakfasts, and a man from Agrivert was doing the talking.
He was talking about waste, and he spoke of some interesting things. I knew whilst I was there that I wouldn’t be able to properly articulate the thoughts and ideas from this seminar unless I did it immediately; I didn’t, so I can’t. I will make a list of thoughts and ideas, instead of trying to generate paragraphs.
- Agrivert deals with organic waste.
- One method Agrivert uses is anaerobic digestion.
- James, the man giving the talk, said that we – the people who create household waste – don’t like to see or smell the waste we create, we dislike the possibility of having the waste we create being weighed in order to tax us for creating too much, yet we have no problem creating endless amounts of waste.
- There is heat and electricity produced through anaerobic digestion. The heat could be put to use if there was a new housing development planned near to an anaerobic digester by being pumped to the houses and used for underfloor heating.
- Digestate is also produced. This is nutrient rich.
- There are 2 million AD plants in India, James said. There are far fewer in Britain.
- People in rural parts of some countries can use domestic plants, into which they can put the waste from their animals and get gas on tap for cooking.
- There is a prison in Rwanda that has a plant. It has reduced its energy requirements from firewood, deals with its sewage, and produces a compost to go onto their gardens.
I think there is great potential for this technology to work on a medium scale, with hospitals, prisons and schools dealing with their own waste and reducing their reliance on fossil fuels for energy requirements. Such establishments could then also grow some of their own food to deal with the resultant digestate.