Eco-Growth pilots waste-to-energy technology in Cremona

Cremona’s bottle depot will be “Ground Zero” for a waste-to-energy (WTE) pilot project that began on March 26, seeking to reduce how much of the village’s organics waste ends up in the landfill.

Cremona’s bottle depot will be “Ground Zero” for a waste-to-energy (WTE) pilot project that began on March 26, seeking to reduce how much of the village’s organic waste ends up in the landfill. 

Representatives from the Village of Cremona, the provincial and federal governments, the village’s local bottle depot, and Calgary-based Eco-Growth Environmental were in Cremona last Saturday to launch a six-month, green-tech pilot project that aims to reduce the community’s carbon footprint.

Eco-Growth president Kim Caron said the pilot will focus on converting Cremona households’ organics and kitchen scraps into a bio-mass material, which ultimately can be used as a fertilizer or turned into a green fuel source.

“In other words, we break it down into a wood-like fibre through a process and then we manufacture and market it,” he said.

According to Caron – a long-time Cochrane resident – Eco-Growth’s commercial-sized rapid dehydrator has been set up at the local bottle depot, and works similarly to how a clothes dryer would. The electrically-powered drum rotates agitating paddles that, in 24 hours, reduce the size of the organics until the end of the cycle, when only a dry, fluffy, wood-like material remains.

Caron brought up how landfill methane is 84-times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. 

“We expect to save the community of Cremona roughly 800,000 pounds of CO2 equivalent a year through this pilot,” he said. “The bottle depot has a rapid dehydrator behind the counter, and households are encouraged to bring in their kitchen waste to the bottle depot, where it will be processed.”

Glen Smith, Eco-Growth’s vice-president and director, said the reason the company targets landfills is because of the negative impact of methane on the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. He explained that without oxygen, decomposing food in a landfill produces methane gas, which is 84 times more harmful to the environment than CO2. Instead of burying organics, he said it’s better for the environment to compost it, dehydrate it, or burn it.

“Everyone has certain habits where they think they’re doing the right thing with organics – our question is, are you?” he said. 

“The reason we go after organics [is because] I call it the low-hanging, buried fruit. The reason I say buried is because when we bury things in the landfill, the organics go anaerobic because no air is getting to it. That’s what turns to methane, and that’s what is an 84-times more harmful greenhouse gas.”

The reason Cremona was selected as the location for the pilot, Caron added, is the fact the community of roughly 450 residents does not have a year-round organics collection service.

“At this point, I’m not sure what the interest or participation level will be, but that’s part of the pilot – to gather that data,” he said. “Instead of putting another bin on the street and have another truck driving around, this is a test to see if home owners – if given the opportunity – will do the right thing.”

The Village of Cremona’s chief administrative officer Rudy Friesen said the municipality offers a green-bin organics collection service six months out of the year. From April until October, he said Cremona’s organics are transported to Stickland Farms in Red Deer County. 

But from October until April, Friesen noted residents’ household scraps ultimately end up in the same place as their waste – the Didsbury landfill.

“[This project] is a good opportunity for us to direct our organics in a different way and see if we can help support something that has a real growth potential and a real positive impact on the province – and ultimately, the world,” he said.

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