Operations Manager Daniel Dutkiewicz, in orange, explains the “digester” system the Bar-Way Farm uses to produce usable products from farm and other waste. File photo
Vanguard Renewables, the Wellesley-based developer of the methane digester at Deerfield’s Bar-Way Farm, has been named 2018 “Organics Recycler of the Year” by the National Waste and Recycling Association.
The award, presented at this week’s Colorado gathering of the private sector waste and recycling services industry association, “recognizes the substantial contribution that Vanguard’s Farm Powered organics recycling and renewable energy production program is making to protect the environment and advance the waste and recycling industry.
Vanguard operates the $5 million digester it helped Bar-Way build last year. The digester, which was hooked up to the electric grid a year ago, converts about 25 tons of manure a week from Bar-Way’s 500 Holstein cows with 75 tons of organic food waste from around the state to generate 1 megawatt of electricity.
Vanguard also operates a digester at Barstow’s Longview Farm in Hadley, Jordan Dairy Farms in Rutland and Crescent Farm in Haverhill. It is developing a digester in Spencer.
Its operating anaerobic digesters represent the largest organics recycling destination in the Northeast, with nearly 200,000 tons per year of combined on-farm and off-farm organics processed.
By this year’s end, Vanguard’s digesters are projected to have recycled and processed 500 tons per day of food waste and 120 tons per day of manure from Massachusetts farms and Massachusetts food manufacturers, businesses, institutions and food users including Gillette Stadium, MGM Springfield, Gorton’s Seafood, Cabot Creamery, Treehouse Brewing, Cape Cod Potato Chips, and Whole Foods.
The digester also produces gas for heating the farm’s barns and a form of animal bedding as a byproduct.
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