Summary: In this second episode we stopped in London to talk to Clare Brass from FoodLoop and Rokiah Yaman from LEAP. Eleen Murphy asked them about their respective projects: A small-scale anaerobic digestion system and an organics recycling program for an inner-city housing estate! Thank you to BiobiN for making this episode possible. BiobiN® is a mobile, on-site organic/wet material management solution that starts the composting process and effectively manages odour from putrescible waste. BiobiN® can be used in a variety of outlets, including food manufacturing, restaurants, shopping centres, supermarkets…it’s endless. Whereever organic or wet materials are generated, BiobiN® is THE solution TRANSCRIPT: EM: So Rokiah, I'll start with you. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about Community By Design and the project you're working on? RY: Okay. Community by Design is a social interest company - community interest company - and we are currently developing anaerobic digestion on a small scale. It's looking to make the technology cost effective at that scale and user friendly. There's not that much of it at the moment at the very small scale and what we're doing is to see if we can spin out as many environmental, social and economic benefits as possible all in one go. So it's a partnership project and we're just one of the partners, and the other partners include Methanogen who is a supplier, a research engineer from a company called Alvan Blanch, there are other engineers involved, and also Leeds University. EM: Right, and how are you funded? RY: We're funded by Camden Council, and they've been great because they've supported us through the initial two years and we couldn't have done this without them. And their objective in funding us is to see if we can generate any employment and training opportunities. So the training side of things...we've had quite a lot of opportunity during the build and also at all kinds of different stages of the project. And by the end of this year we hope to do a bit of economic modeling and see where we can pull the income in from to take beyond the funding. But WRAP has also funding us: WRAP are Waste and Resources and Action Program, and they've given us funding for the next year to do the other sites, basically. EM: Yeah that's really cool. And I know that some of our listeners have not yet “graduated” from compostory.org, or are beginners on the anaerobic digestion topic. Maybe you can re-detail the process so we have everyone on board here. RY: Okay, so anaerobic digestion is a type of composting that happens without oxygen. It takes place in a sealed vessel and it can break down any organic material, except for wood: it's the lignin in the wood that it can't deal with. And we capture the gas that comes from it, which is about 60 percent methane, 40 percent Co2 and then some trace elements of other gasses. And the waste itself turns into a pretty liquid fertiliser: that's what happens when we use food waste as the main feed stock. It's a good compliment actually to compost that's generated through an aerobic process, so they compliment each other pretty well in terms of nutrients. EM: Brilliant stuff. And I was looking at how you use the biogas that you trap, maybe you can explain that a little bit? RY: Oh right. So the biogas: the 60 percent of it which is methane is pretty much identical with what comes out of your mains gas, so that's the bit that we can burn and generate heat and electricity with. It can also be used as a vehicle fuel. So we basically have got funding for the next year to set up three sites, and one of them has just been set up and been commissioned already. That one is going to be generating electricity and heat using something that looks like a boiler - it's called a Combined Heat and Power Unit. It's a micro-scale unit and the electricity and heat will be used for the building that we're attached to.
