In 2017, a recycling facility in Gloucestershire demonstrated how food and agricultural waste could become a valuable source of renewable energy rather than simply ending up as rubbish. Rose Hill Recycling, based in Dymock, was processing around 35,000 tonnes of food and farm waste each year when a new biogas-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant was introduced. The facility was designed and managed by Veolia under a project announced in February 2017, with the CHP unit capable of generating 4.56 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of renewable electricity annually—enough, according to Veolia, to supply around 1,400 homes. The project offered a striking example of the circular economy in practice, turning organic waste into energy while reducing reliance on conventional electricity supplies.
The story began with a straightforward environmental challenge: what should happen to unavoidable food waste once it can no longer be eaten or reused? At Rose Hill Recycling, mixed food waste collected from across the Cotswolds became a feedstock for anaerobic digestion, a biological process that breaks down organic material in an oxygen-free environment.
