A dairy farm in Amelia Court House, Virginia, is running a large-scale anaerobic digester that converts food and beverage waste, along with dairy manure, into pipeline-quality renewable natural gas (RNG). This is happening about 40 minutes outside Richmond. Food waste makes up about 24 percent of the material in U.S. landfills, but according to an EPA analysis, it's responsible for an estimated 58 percent of the fugitive methane released from municipal solid waste landfills, because it decomposes faster than most other landfilled material, generating methane before gas-collection systems are in place. Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps significantly more heat than CO2 in the short term. This isn't simply a feel-good farm story because it is preventing food waste from rotting in a landfill. It's a very practical climate intervention in the disguise of a backyard project.
The dairy farm doing double duty
