As a child one of my favorite authors was Roald Dahl, you know the author of James and the Giant Peach, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and my favorite The BFG. Anyways WW and the Chocolate Factory also happens to be in the top ten of my movie list next to Gone in 60 Seconds and Coal Miner's Daughter. Anyways, today in my Agroecology class I had the opportunity to take a little trip out to Pittsboro, NC to the Piedmont Biofuels plant. There are lots of cool and innovative things going on at this site that made me super excited about -- reminding me of Willy Wonka's factory!
Now I must preface this with saying NO I am not one of those "hippie vegetarian eat only organic persons," not there is anything wrong with those people...it's just not me.
Having been in multiple agriculture courses in various disciplines I have been able to see a variety of perspectives. For instance, in Intro to Animal Science we discussed how the byproducts of many crops used by humans are an excellent source for our livestock such as using soybean meal in the beef and swine industry after the oil is extracted. In Natural Resource Economics we discussed how policy effects a variety of our natural resources such as policies focused on 'fixing' global climate change and carbon footprints while also meeting the needs and demands of the world food supply. In Wildlife Management we talk about the effects traditional agriculture methods have on wildlife populations and then in Agroecology we discuss the sustainability of food systems and incorporating the assets of the natural environment into agricultural systems. We talk about closing the nutrient cycle, making use of the whole plant. We also discuss in this class alternatives methods to the conventional such as biofuels. But then in Livestock Evaluation we talk about the rise in cattle prices due to a rise in corn prices due to the subsidizing of bioethanol as an alternative fuel source.
Are you starting to see the connections here? Many times these topics overlap and in many cases they conflict. It's quite interesting to put all of this together.
Back to my story...today when we went on our trip to Piedmont Biofuels we were able to see how they are transforming the 'scraps' of the food industry into a clean burning biodiesel. Now I must note here that Biofuel is the broad term for fuels made using renewable biomass products. Bioethanol is a fuel made from the fermentation of starch, sugars and cellulose. Biodiesel is made from oil crops or animal fats and is the equivalent to petroleum based diesel.
At PB's they are currently used used cooking grease in order to make biodiesel. At the facility they have also incorporated many other sustainable aspects to their facilities. Such as a solar double cropping system, vermicomposting (think of 100 bins of worms each with 2 lbs of worms eating half their weight in Whole Foods food scraps a day), aquaponics lettuce (sequesters CO2 from propane heaters speeding up growth), a fuel from the scraps of the world and even making herbicides/insecticides and bug spray from the byproducts of biofuels. All of this is the equivalent to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory in the sustainability world.
I'll leave you with one last classic that I think is appropriate.
How awesome is all of this, this is why i'm interested in what I'm doing! If you have questions about any of this I could probably go on but I'll stop for now :) so send me a message! For more info on Piedmont Biofuels go to http://www.biofuels.coop/
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