Rubbish Electricity

A company in Leicester, UK, is using organic waste to produce heat and electricity.

Waste, which would normally go to land full is sorted and then fed into an anaerobic digester. This allows the methane gas generated by the rotting organic material to be collected, fed into generators and there produce heat and about 1.5kw of electricity.

This isn’t a massive amount but as the firm says, better to extract some power from the recycling system than throw it away and cause potential dangers from land fill methane seepage.

The BBC’s environment correspondent explained how it works in a short video report here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk