by Shane Henson — November 29, 2013—Cleveland Browns fans may feel even more pride walking into FirstEnergy Stadium after learning about the huge strides the city of Cleveland has taken to make the sports team’s facility a model of effective waste management.
The innovation-driven Browns are reportedly the first professional franchise to implement the Grind2Energy system from InSinkErator, a manufacturer of food waste disposers owned by Emerson. The Browns management expects the new system to not only help the stadium operate efficiently but also preserve valuable resources in the community.
The Grind2Energy system is designed to make food waste cleanup easier, improve hygiene, reduce odor and pest problems, lower waste disposal costs, and recycle food waste into energy. At the stadium, food scraps that would otherwise go to a landfill are collected and ground into a slurry, which is transported to an anaerobic digester operated by quasar energy group at Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. At the anaerobic digester, which periodically adds cow manure to lower acidity and boost the methane, quasar produces biogas for energy and fuel uses.
According to InSinkErator, the implementation of the system at FirstEnergy Stadium will:
- Divert 35 tons of food waste from landfills every season
- Reduce CO2 emissions by 28,000 pounds per year
- Generate enough electricity to power a single-family home for a year and a half
- Produce enough natural gas to heat 32 homes for an entire month
- Recover enough nutrients for three football fields of new crops
Tim Ferry, president of InSinkErator, looks forward to his company working with more businesses to reduce waste using the innovative system.
“The idea that we can now transform food categorized as ‘waste’ into a source of renewable energy is truly a game changer, especially with an estimated 36 million tons of food waste from commercial and residential sources ending up in U.S. landfills each year,” said Ferry. “The Grind2Energy system is a sustainable solution for facilities like sporting arenas, grocery stores, hotels, and academic institutions, and, as seen at FirstEnergy Stadium, it has the potential to revolutionize the future of food waste.”
