James Cook University launches carbon neutral food recycling system

Queensland’s James Cook University claims to be the first university in the world to install a machine that takes food scraps and turns them into a liquid bio-fertiliser. The Bio-Regen system, created by local company VRM, has the potential to revolutionise management of commercial food waste and is already attracting worldwide attention.

The Bio-Regen is compact, efficient and designed to overcome the problems associated with commercial composting systems.

Each year, JCU’s kitchens (including private colleges) produce close to 100 t of food waste, according to JCU’s Manager, Environment, Estate Office, Adam Connell. That results in 380 t of CO_² equivalent emissions when sent to landfill - as much as 84 cars on the road for a year.

The usual solution would be to use a composting system, but that still produces carbon emissions, so JCU teamed up with local company VRM to tackle the issue.

VRM’s inventor of the Bio-Regen unit, Ken Bellamy, said the number one item on the ‘can’t be recycled’ list was food.

“Since I’ve been in the industry, food and organic waste has been the elephant in the room when discussing greenhouse gases and the cost of recycling. It’s the thing that’s never been touched, until now,” he said.

VRM provide and service the units that convert the food scraps to a liquid slurry by mixing it with water. The slurry is then combined with a special mixture of microorganisms and pumped into a tank outside the building where it is left for 28 days to digest, converting the food into a product similar in appearance to apple cider vinegar. The tanks are then emptied and the liquid is processed into a bio-fertiliser for use on lawns and gardens as a soil conditioner. Importantly, the process is odour free and carbon neutral.

The JCU Halls kitchen caters for nearly 300 students and staff, providing three meals a day.

“It is expected that over 20 tonnes of food waste will be diverted from landfill from the Uni Halls kitchen annually, saving 76 tonnes of GHG emissions, the equivalent of 17 cars off the road,” said Connell.

The Bio-Regen has helped the university to not only remove the cost associated with disposal of its food waste, but also create an income.

“The kitchen will save over $5000 per year in waste removal costs and will be, instead, producing a product that has value and can be used on site with the excess being sold to farmers,” said Connell.

“We’ve basically wiped out a big part of our cost of sending food waste to landfill, which is expensive and wasteful, especially now the government’s brought in a landfill levy.

“We’re turning something that’s cost us lots of money, in the past, into something that’s making us money.”