From kitchen to animal feed in Japan

Last week I was in Japan in order to start some collaborations with some Japanese companies and research institutes. In Japan, there is generally no biogas from wastes and they just burn the waste with no product (as we produce district heat and electricity here in Sweden). I had a chance to visit Biomass Expo in Tokyo. One of the companies (Kyoritsu) had an interesting simple solution for hotels, restaurants or juice companies. They just dried the waste materials by heating in e.g. vacuum sulimation. The results was some kinds of granules that they said it is used for animal feed.

(Food recycling soluion of the Japanese company. The picture is from their website, Sorry no English text)

Spirit of dates

Date is a fruit of date palm, which is widely planted in hot and dry climate regions of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It is consider as an edible holy fruit with a number of interesting properties. Annual production of dates is about 7,000,000 tons, by which about 2,000,000 tons/year are wastes. We have recently published an article about it, in which the specifications and some technical aspects of waste dates are considered. These wastes are full of glucose and fructose and can be a source of many different products such as "spirit"!


(Waste dates, as the raw materials for ethanol production in a novel plant in Isfahan, Iran. The photo is taken by my friend, Dr. Keikhosro Karimi)

Human development for better waste recovery

"People are the real wealth of a nation", it is the conclusion of the latest Human Development Report. The report shows different aspects of the human developments, which includes several positive points in the last 20 years, but also some aspects that were not well developed. I believe "People and the Management are the real wealth of a nation". A good education and human development together with a right management of a nation together results in great development. Waste management and resource recovery is part of this system, which need development in both social as well as technical aspects.


(Fig. 5.9 of the report that shows countries with higher multidimensional poverty headcounts
often have higher intensity of deprivation)

Hand in Hand for children in India

There are tens of thousands children in India who are scavengers and survive by collecting some valuable materials from waste dumping areas. There was recently a TV report at SVT about an organization called "Hand in Hand" who managed working of the adults in the scanvenger families and send their children to the school. It is an important job and might drastically improve the future of these children. I wish them good luck!


(Thanks to my friend Jessica Magnusson for the tips on this report)