Anaerobic Digestion

The Challenge

The diversion and processing of residential food wastes can be a challenge for municipalities as these materials represent 30% of the municipal waste stream in Canada. When disposed of in a landfill, food wastes can become a significant source of methane - a potent greenhouse gas. One effective solution to divert these materials from landfill disposal and the capture of greenhouse gases is anaerobic digestion.

Recognizing the Value of Organics

Veolia recognizes that each city has its own unique challenges in managing its organic wastes as well as the need to extract the maximum value from these materials. We provide unparalleled expertise with a wide range of proven processing technologies that are tailored to your municipality’s specific feedstocks and desired outputs such as digestate and biogas.

Digestate can be further processed into various land based applications including for agricultural purposes. Biogas can be converted into renewable natural gas for injection into the gas pipeline. Renewable natural gas is being used to power homes, businesses and waste collection vehicles that collect the food wastes - an example of the circular economy in action.

Food wastes can also be co-digested or co-located at wastewater treatment facilities as many of these facilities have anaerobic digesters which are underutilized. Leveraging existing municipal infrastructure to process food wastes is an opportunity to efficiently and effectively co-manage municipal organics and biosolids.

A Global Leader

Veolia is a global leader in organic material recovery. We help municipalities process food wastes efficiently and effectively and convert these materials into renewable energy and valuable soil products for agricultural and other land based applications.

Veolia operates 126 anaerobic digestion and composting operations across seven countries, processing over 3 million tons of materials, over 1.0 million tons of fertilizer as well as the generation of over 44,000 MWh of electricity.

Our team of experts work with you to determine the most effective and efficient technologies and services to address the challenges for processing the organic waste streams in your market. Through a deep understanding of the entire materials management cycle, we provide operations and management services for a wide range of organics, biosolids and residual management programs.