Huge site in South East England will burn household rubbish - to make the food we eat greener
Forty hectares of greenhouses, heated by the burning of rubbish, are set to be built in Essex - making it the largest low-carbon horticulture site in Europe.
These greenhouses will be the first of their kind and could provide around 6% of the tomatoes consumed in the UK.
It should begin operating in 2027, when almost all the county's household rubbish will come to the Rivenhall site, where it will then be burnt in an incinerator.
Sounds like a fine idea even if it's something we could have been doing for many years already.
These greenhouses will be the first of their kind and could provide around 6% of the tomatoes consumed in the UK.
It should begin operating in 2027, when almost all the county's household rubbish will come to the Rivenhall site, where it will then be burnt in an incinerator.
Sounds like a fine idea even if it's something we could have been doing for many years already.
I once worked at a lab which collected hundreds of river samples per day in PET bottles. Once the samples had been analysed, the bottles were emptied and disposed of via a local incinerator.
Unfortunately, one load of bottles wasn't emptied before collection, nobody noticed at the incinerator and apparently the water left in the bottles doused the incinerator.
The Essex scheme still sounds like something we should be doing though, if only similar schemes aren't doused by bureaucracy.
But the National Farmers Union says further projects like Rivenhall could be hampered by the government's new biodiversity net gain strategy, which forces all developers to benefit nature through their builds.
8 comments:
In my last job I worked with a horticulturalist who was teaching young people about growing flowers for the cut flower market. Apparently it's a massive business. His grumble was that we had lost out to the Dutch, who then had lost out to the Eastern Europeans. And he said we could easily regain markets and out-compete them, if only the Government would take a little bit of tax off the heating oil. We've got the know-how, and the high tech kit, and our natural growing year is better for flowers. Just one little nudge would sort it, he said.
Do I remember vegetables being grown at the bottom of cooling towers? (Brain fading......) If so, there is nothing new about this, merely the use of a by-product of industry surely?
‘Biodiversity net gain strategy’ … has that certain ring to it … to be avoided at all costs.
Greener? I don't want to eat green tomatoes though I'll grant they make fine chutney. But, alas, we've lost our recipe.
Sam - interesting, sounds as if the Nudge Unit is working in the wrong direction. I once watched a video about growing cut daffodils on a large scale, but it seems as if the scale does have to be huge if prices are to be competitive.
Chris - I don't remember that, but it should have worked. Maybe it was unofficial - power station workers growing their own at the base of cooling towers.
James - yes it does have a certain ring to it. Tick box tedium?
dearieme - I can't help with the recipe. My parents had a good green tomato recipe, but I don't have it unfortunately. They had a good pickled cucumber recipe too, but that's also disappeared.
I did once visit a sugar refinery in East Anglia where the waste heat and CO2 in the gas turbine exhaust gas was piped to greenhouses growing tomatoes.
dearieme - sounds sensible and raises a point, we don't get much waste heat from service industries. For some reason it's often tomatoes for schemes like that.
@ dearime - If you Google Wissington British Sugar you'll find this:
"It is also the site of the UK's largest single glasshouse, which is powered by the factory's Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant"
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