A cow named Hyacinth is leading a campaign to 'green' a city by disposing of all its food waste by anaerobic digestion at Europe's first combined low-carbon energy centre and manufacturing farm. Problems with a reducing milk yield from a herd of Jersey and Guernsey cows, which includes Hyacinth, has led to spectacular green energy solution at Langage Farm, at Lee Mill, on the outskirts of Plymouth, Devon and moved on to a powerful waste disposal campaign.
A cow named Hyacinth is leading a campaign to 'green' a city by disposing of all its food waste by anaerobic digestion at Europe's first combined low-carbon energy centre and manufacturing farm.
!ADVERTISEMENT!
Problems with a reducing milk yield from a herd of Jersey and Guernsey cows, which includes Hyacinth, has led to spectacular green energy solution at Langage Farm, at Lee Mill, on the outskirts of Plymouth, Devon and moved on to a powerful waste disposal campaign.
Langage has been a working farmstead for 900 years and was mentioned in the Domesday Book. The Harvey family started making clotted cream on their AGA stove and selling on to friends and local stores.
Full-scale processing began in 1980 with a £1.8 million on a new food processing facility in 2004.
The company now has a turnover of £3.3 million and places products with major retailers including Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose and Morrisons. It makes a range of diary produce including clotted cream, pouring creams, yoghurt and cheeses as well as a frozen range of ice creams, sorbets and yoghurts.
As production increased milk yield reduced and drought exacerbated the problem. It was found the soil was compacted and lacked structure and as a consequence the roots of grass were short and tended to grow to the surface instead of driving deep. Artificial fertiliser made the problem worse.
The solution was to build an anaerobic digester, which would not only produce high-grade fertiliser for the farm but also meet all of the company's energy needs.
The AD plant is now running and the statistics are impressive. The methane extracted from the plant is converted into electricity and powers the whole plant. (Methane gas is estimated to be 21 times higher in its greenhouse effect than CO2.)
Renewable heat and power supplied to the food processing factory has eliminated the use of 40,500 litres of heating oil and 867144 kWh of electricity from the grid each year which are estimated to produce the equivalent of 100 and 470 tonnes of CO2 respectively
And it has reduced the use of inorganic fertilisers in primary agricultural production thereby saving approximately 300,000 kg CO2.
Article continues: http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/analysis/general-analysis/123023-does-hyacinth-the-cow-hold-the-key-to-a-more-sustainable-future.html
Image credit: Niels Quist/Shutterstock
