April 26, 2022. This Earth Day, Energy Vision released its report, Food Waste Erased: Reduce, Redistribute, Recycle & Refuel, detailing progress over the past five years toward national and international targets to redistribute edible food and utilize food waste as a resource to combat climate change.
Coinciding with the release of the report, Energy Vision participated in the April 20th groundbreaking for one of the most sophisticated food waste digesters in the country – a model plant that should inspire many others across New York State and beyond.
“Only with this plant and many others like it,” said Energy Vision’s founder Joanna Underwood in her remarks, “can New York meet its waste prevention, climate change, and air quality goals.” She congratulated American Organic Energy and its partners for this exciting project, being built in Yaphank, New York.
This plant will take in180,000 tons of Long Island and New York City food waste a year and turn it into clean fuel and organic compost. It will capture the potent methane biogases that this food waste emits today when it is sent to distant landfills, contributing to climate change. These biogases will be refined into fuel to heat local homes, power to run the plants’ operations and enough clean renewable natural gas (RNG) fuel to displace 1.9 million gallons of polluting diesel fuel in local truck fleets.
According to Energy Vision, the American Organic Energy project exemplifies the kind of innovation necessary and possible to turn inedible food waste from a climate and environmental liability into a clean fuel and soil-replenishing resource.