announcement
Nestlé’s War on Waste: A Journey through the Supply Chain
- Biomass fuel, bio-char and bio-oil: the waste is decomposed using fluidized bed pyrolysis. This is a thermal decomposition process that occurs in the absence of oxygen.
- Clay bricks: the waste is rich in cellulose, pectin, starch and sugar and can be formed to feed ovens and replace coal and wood energy.
- Heavy metal absorption (chromium, zinc, etc.) to restore soil.
- A recent Iranian study found that the waste from tea extract production is surprisingly rich in easily extractable anti-oxidants and may have attractive secondary markets.
- West Bengal farmers sell their tea waste to the caffeine industry both domestically and through exports. It is widely used in pharmaceutical products. The caffeinated waste is an effective feed for pigs and poultry.
- Nestlé ’s own wider initiatives have included using coffee grounds as biomass, providing 35 percent of the factory’s energy, recovering, recycling, and selling oat hulls as animal feed, and breaking down bacteria in a “chemical soup” of waste in an airtight tank to produce biogas.
- Other multinationals are very active in the move to zero waste, too. Finlay’s successes include a biogas plant that takes black and green tea spent leaf as input from its farms and discharges it into a slurry lagoon to be used as a soil fertilizer for timber locations, new field clearing and tea plantations. The digester can hold 7,000 metric tons of organic tea waste.
Nestlé HENRi