Don't throw your plate scrapings into the garbage!

You could drive your car on that!: [my bold]

Scandinavian Biogas is investing about 10 million euros to upgrade a wastewater treatment plant in Ulsan and will soon start accepting food and other waste for processing into biogas, said Scandinavian Biogas President and CEO Thomas Davidsson.

"Producing biogas is a very effective way of taking care of the waste" as it can be used for heat, electricity and vehicle fuel, Davidsson said in an interview Wednesday. He was in Seoul to participate in the Seoul Climate Change Expo held in conjunction with the third C40 Large Cities Climate Summit.

Turning food waste into biogas can also contribute to efforts to stop global warming.

"If you dump it into the sea, methane will be produced," he said. "And methane released into the air is 21 times more aggressive than carbon dioxide. So it has a great impact on the greenhouse effect."

Ulsan is not alone in looking to Sweden for help. Seoul, South Korea's largest city with a population of over 10 million people, also sees potential in biogas and has teamed up with Swedish Biogas International AB on a pilot project.

"There is a lot of potential," Kjell Enstrom, who heads the company's operations in South Korea, said Thursday in an interview.

South Korea has the ability to produce biogas, Enstrom said, though not of a clean enough level to be used as fuel. That gives companies from Sweden, which has championed the technology, an advantage.

"Within 10 years I think it will be the main fuel in Sweden," he said.

Davidsson, of Scandinavian Biogas, said his company plans to initially sell the biogas to an industrial user in Ulsan for internal heating. The company has an agreement to run the facility for at least 15 years, he said.

Ulsan's Park said that as a long-term goal, the city wants to adopt the biogas system to all its public buses.

Davidsson said that among the advantages of biogas is that is a technology that, unlike ethanol, does not draw resources away from food production.

Take that, ethanol!

A greenhouse sewage treatment center

Via Phila of Bouphonia's Friday Hope Blogging, look what the people of Weston, MA did:

In 1997, the businesses located in the town center of Weston, MA were required to upgrade their sewage treatment system. The majority of these businesses, including the Omni supermarket and 30 others, chose a solar aquatic system that was later constructed by the Ecological Engineering Group. The natural waste treatment plant had tremendous advantages over other, traditional options. Who could refuse a cheaper, cleaner, odorless, aesthetically pleasing system that could treat all your waste?

[snip]

When switching from the old waste treatment system, considerations included, cost, appearance and odor. The old waste treatment system cost 11 to 15 cents per gallon of waste treated, compared to the natural system, which costs merely 10 cents per gallon. This reduction in cost per gallon seems to be common after switching to natural systems. In Poughkeepsie, for instance, a newer reed bed operation costs 3 to 5 cents per a gallon, whereas the older mechanical systems cost 7 to 15 cents.

Weston’s solar aquatic system cost between $700,000 and $750,000 to build. Ten years after its construction, the treatment center is still in great shape; the pipes are going to be replaced for the first time in the near future.