Powering homes with ice-cream waste

Not only is chocolate ice-cream one of the nation’s favourite flavours, but it has also emerged as the most powerful flavour for green energy too. This is following an innovative project involving the world’s third-largest ice-cream manufacturer, R&R Ice Cream, Iona Capital and resource management company, Veolia in which inedible ice-cream waste is being turned into biogas for the UK National Grid.

The R&R factory, based in Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire, is the UK’s largest producer of own label ice-cream as well as top brands such as Nestlé’s Fab, Rowntrees’ Fruit Pastille lollies, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate sticks, Oreo ice-cream and Yoomoo frozen yoghurt, and now what is left over from the production of these sweet treats will help power local homes.

The sugary sludge consisting of sugar, fat and protein that is left behind after production line cleansing is to be transformed into bio-methane, a biogas. This will then go to the National Grid to heat UK homes, thanks to the nearby anaerobic digestion (AD) facility funded by Iona Capital and operated by Veolia.

The transformation process resembles the human body burning calories, and like our bodies, different flavours of our favourite frozen dessert amount to different levels of energy. It transpires that chocolate ice-cream provides 10% more energy than vanilla, and 20% more energy than strawberry. And if you were to add a chocolate flake to the mix it could boost the energy efficiency by 20%.

The raw material that goes to the AD facility would otherwise be discarded and sent to landfill. Now it is not only avoiding landfill but the by-product that is left over at the end of the AD process is a nutrient-rich fertiliser that can be distributed to farms to improve crop production.

The Leeming facility, which is one of the largest gas-to-grid energy plants in the UK, is now fully functional, and will contribute to the UK Government’s target for 20% of the UK’s energy generation to come from green energy by 2020.