Yogurt leftovers become heat: an Ohio plant turns factory waste into renewable gas

In the village of Minster, Ohio, what a yogurt factory throws away now comes back as heat. PurposeEnergy has switched on a facility that takes up to 250,000 gallons a day of wastewater and food scraps, piped straight from Danone USA's largest yogurt plant and other food makers nearby, and digests them into renewable biogas. At full operation it should make about 50,000 MMBtu of biogas a year, piped back to a boiler at the Danone plant to replace natural gas — a swap the company estimates avoids about 3,200 US tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, plus roughly 720 more tons saved because the waste no longer leaves town by truck. The water that leaves the plant is cleaned beyond the village's own discharge standards, and what is left over becomes nutrient-rich soil food for farms.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: infrastructure build