Somewhere in Riverside County, California, a plant the size of a small stadium is digesting your food waste and spewing out fuel. It could pass for an outlandish piece of experimental technology. Still, no, it’s really there, working, and may well be one of the most underrated climate stories in the United States. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s description of renewable natural gas from biogas, anaerobic digestion, which is the decomposition of organic waste by microorganisms in an oxygen-free environment, is turning into one of the more effective technologies America can use to curb methane emissions while generating fuel.
And there’s a particularly spectacular case of anaerobic digestion taking place in one of the waste facilities located in the city of Perris, about an hour away from Los Angeles. CR&R Environmental probably isn’t the household name you’re familiar with. However, it's a Southern California waste-hauling company that has built, almost in secret, what has been called one of the largest food-and-green waste digesters in the country.
