Kraft Foods Plants Reduce Natural Gas Use With Biogas
Kraft Foods recently released a report detailing their efforts to reduce waste. Of course the section that got my attention was where they talked about the production of biogas at two of their New York plants.
Waste-to-energy projects at Kraft Foods’ cheese plants in Lowville and Campbell, N.Y., create enough renewable energy to heat about 2,600 typical homes in the Northeast for one year. Besides producing delicious Philadelphia cream cheese, Kraft cheese and Polly-O Italian style cheese, the plants offset about 30 percent of their natural gas needs by creating biogas through anaerobic digesters that turn whey waste – a regular byproduct of cheesemaking – into biogas. This reduces the amount of solid waste each plant produces and reduces non-renewable energy for use. The U.S. Department of Energy recently named the Campbell, N.Y., plant an “Energy Champion” as part of its 2010 Save Energy Now Award for implementing significant energy savings in their facility.
