Every day, food that looks useless to us begins a very different journey in Sydney. Fruit and vegetable scraps, food-processing waste, liquid organic waste and other suitable food materials can be collected instead of being sent straight to landfill. They are taken to EarthPower, a food waste-to-energy facility in Camellia, where bacteria do something surprisingly useful with them.
Inside sealed tanks, the waste is broken down without oxygen. The process produces biogas. That gas is then used to generate electricity, while the remaining organic material is processed into a nutrient-rich soil improver.
