Turning Waste Into Electricity

In 2016 the Market installed a Gaia machine onsite which turned the Market’s green waste into a nutrient rich fertiliser, an initiative that earned the Environmental Sustainability Award at both the IPAA Victoria Leadership in the Public Sector Awards and LGPro Awards for Excellence in 2017.

When this machine reached end of life, the Market was keen to explore new developments in food waste processing that could provide an enhanced solution for repurposing our food scraps. The commencement of a new cleaning contract in September provided the perfect opportunity to implement an exciting new option: turning food waste into electricity!

The Market’s new cleaning contractor IKON service now supplies our food scraps to Yarra Valley Water’s ReWaste facility which uses anaerobic digestion to process commercial food waste into clean, renewable energy.

When food waste breaks down and isn’t exposed to sufficient oxygen it creates methane gas. When this waste breaks down in landfill, this methane is released into our atmosphere and is one of the key contributors to climate change.

At ReWaste, this methane is instead captured and used to generate clean electricity. The facility sits next to Yarra Valley Water’s Aurora sewage treatment plant and generates enough energy to power the facility and the sewage treatment plant. Excess energy is exported to the electricity grid.

The process also creates digestate, a nutrient-rich fertiliser that can be used to grow more food.