The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is planning use food waste as a source of biomass energy.
Taiwan produces on average 2,246 tonnes of food waste per day and about 1,263 tonnes of cooked food waste becomes pig food per day, EPA data showed.
The Council of Agriculture on Wednesday last week banned pig farmers from using cooked food waste for a month amid an African swine fever scare, which has increased the food waste that the EPA has to handle.
Since 2019, the EPA has subsidized local governments to install facilities to process uncooked food waste.
EPA officials said that it would be a while before the facilities can process cooked food waste.
“For the facilities to handle cooked food waste as well, local governments would have to grow bacteria to ferment the compost,” Bureau of Environmental Inspection Technical Supervisor Lin Tso-hsiang (林佐祥) said on Monday.
“Because each site has its own treatment process, we cannot mandate a single bacterium,” Lin said.
Although the facilities have adequate capacity to handle the excess food waste until the council ban ends, the EPA is forced to incinerate the waste or bury it in landfills, Lin said.
Businesses that dump food waste into the sewage system in contravention of the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) would face jail terms of one to five years or fines of up to NT$15 million (US$541,321), he said.
However, the waste can be used as a source of biomass energy, he said.
“We have funded the Central Livestock Farm to conduct an experiment to produce biogas by fermenting food waste along with pig feces and urine,” Lin said.
“Biogas can help generate electricity, while biogas slurry and residue can be used as organic fertilizer,” he said.
“If the experiment proceeds successfully, we plan to replicate the same model at pig farms across the nation to process food waste,” he added.
There are plans to pulp household food waste before it is delivered to anaerobic digestion facilities at wastewater treatment plants, Lin said, adding that the treatment process would help dispose of the waste and generate biogas.
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