UK Grocery Chain Sainsbury’s to Start Turning Wasted Food Into Electricity
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY 
on 01.22.09
image: Sainsbury’s
TreeHugger has covered the problem with wasted food a number of times. Now the UK’s third largest supermarket chain Sainsbury’s is planning to do something useful with a portion of that wasted food: Turning it into electricity. Here’s how:
Program Starts in Scotland, Nationwide by Summer
Each week Sainsbury’s will send 42 tonnes of wasted food from its 28 stores in Scotland to a biomass electric plant in Motherwell. Each tonne of food waste is is expected to be able to generate enough power for 500 homes.
By the summer Sainsbury’s stores throughout the UK will also be sending their unsold waste food to (unspecified) biomass plants. The whole thing is part of the company’s Zero Waste program, which by the end of the year will see Sainsbury's stop sending any waste to landfills.
In the UK some 6.7 million tonnes of food is wasted every year, 50% of which is unopened or otherwise untouched, leading to 8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
via: Cleantech
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