- PepsiCo builds food waste-to-energy plant at Simba Chips Johannesburg Site in South Africa.
- The American soft drink and food giant wants to reduce its methane emissions in the southern African country, as well as its dependence on the national electricity grid.
In South Africa, PepsiCo is committed to lowering its methane emissions. The American company, which produces food items as well as the well-known “Pepsi” brand of beverages, is creating an energy recovery project for food waste at its Simba Chips facility in Johannesburg. The task has been given to Tecroveer, a water and waste treatment specialist from South Africa, by PepsiCo.
According to the terms of its contract, Tecroveer will construct a facility that can process 11,500 tonnes of food scraps, fried food, and sewage sludge annually.
Through an 800 kW power plant, the garbage will be transformed into electricity and fertiliser for PepsiCo’s crops in South Africa. The proposed facility will make use of high solids anaerobic digestion technology from Anaergia. Anaerobic digestion is the process by which living microorganisms are mixed in a tank with organic material that we dispose of, remove, or throw away to produce biomethane (renewable natural gas), according to the Canadian provider of full solutions for recovering organics from waste.
Pepsico’s strategy attempts to reduce methane emissions, one of the factors contributing to climate change, as well as its reliance on the Eskom grid in South Africa, its electricity costs in a time of load shedding, and pollution.