The 147th Diet session passed the Law for Promotion of Recycling of Food Waste (Food Recycling Law), and preparations are currently underway for its enforcement in April 2001.
Food-related businesses, which are required to reduce the amount of waste they process by 20%, are taking measures such as removing and sorting foreign substances, reviewing food procurement and cooking methods, and installing food waste disposers or outsourcing to recycling companies. The 20% reduction can be achieved not only by recycling, but also by dehydration and shredding. Therefore, it is certain that not a small number of businesses will choose this practical method due to cost considerations, but it is clear that business opportunities have been created for food waste recycling.
As for general waste from business operations, which has an extremely low recycling rate among food wastes, there has not been much progress in technological development and there are almost no recycling facilities. In preparation for the enforcement of the law, there is an urgent need to develop recycling facilities and businesses for business-related general waste generated by supermarkets, convenience stores, and the food service industry.
Under these circumstances, the establishment of food waste recycling systems has already begun in various places, and in conjunction with this, the launch of recycling businesses, technological development, and market introduction are also gaining momentum. At present, the recycling methods envisioned include composting, feed conversion, and biogas conversion. Currently, however, related businesses, whether equipment or reclamation projects, tend to concentrate on composting. In order to recycle the approximately 20 million tons of food waste generated annually, composting alone will naturally lead to an oversupply, and demand will vary throughout the year, depending on the timing of fertilizer application. In terms of business, competition is expected to intensify.
Therefore, there are high expectations for the future development of the business and for the recycling of resources in the feed industry. The effective use of food waste is, of course, also promising, as it is consistent with the government's goal of increasing self-sufficiency, a goal that has been promoted by the government for some time but which has not progressed very far.
Use in Swine Feed
Until recently, it was commonplace to use leftover food scraps as animal feed. This is especially true in pig farming, or what is called "leftover pig farming. Livestock farmers and others collected processed agricultural products, expired foods, and other urban garbage as raw materials for concentrated feed, which they mixed themselves and fed to their pigs. However, around the 1960s, feed manufacturers and agricultural cooperatives began selling formula feed made from corn and soybean meal imported from overseas. In addition, the development of large-scale pig farming operations in conjunction with the increase in consumption of livestock products and the retreat of pig farming operations from urban areas further reduced the use of urban kitchen waste in pig farming operations. Another major factor was the switch to formula feed to save labor due to the aging of workers and other factors.
According to a survey of livestock production conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the amount of leftover feed per fattening pig decreased from 205.9 kg/year in 1965 to 82.6 kg/year in 1980 and 6.2 kg/year in 1997. Currently, there are approximately 12,500 pig farmers in Japan with approximately 9.9 million head of pigs, but only about 1,000 pig farmers feed their pigs with leftover food, and the number of pigs they feed is about 200,000 head of pigs.
On the other hand, however, food manufacturing by-products such as fish intestine bones, rape seed meal, shochu shochu lees, and squeezed fruit juice lees, which are easily processed in large quantities and of stable freshness and quality, are being processed and used as ingredients for compound feed, and as of 1996, 1.04 million tons had been converted into feed.
As of 1996, 1.04 million tons had been converted to feed. In reality, imported feedstuffs are currently cheaper and of more stable quality. However, it is difficult to imagine that the current feed prices, which are said to be the lowest in the market, will continue at this level. The world has long reached the limit of its ability to increase food production through improvements in agricultural technology, and per capita grain production has been declining by more than 1% every year since its peak in 1984. China has also become a grain-importing country as its meat consumption has increased due to improved living standards. In addition, the effects of abnormal weather conditions worldwide have made agricultural production increasingly unstable.
In addition, Japan's grain self-sufficiency rate is 28%, which is extremely low compared to most countries with populations over 100 million, where the rate exceeds 80%. Despite this, the amount of food waste is one of the highest in the world. Under these circumstances, when the food industry, including production and distribution, takes the opportunity of the Food Recycling Law to seek recycling, the direction of feed conversion will come into focus, not only for industrial waste, but also for general waste from business operations.
Half of all waste can be used.
How much of the food waste can be used as feedstock? According to a trial conducted by the Hokkaido Livestock Experiment Station, "Feed intake, carcass weight, and carcass yield were comparable to those of formula feeds even when 15-30% of the feed was substituted for the formula feed. However, increasing the substitution rate tended to decrease fat brightness, increase the percentage of unsaturated fatty acids, and decrease the melting point. The test results showed that "20% substitution of formula feed is possible in the pre- and mid-fattening period, but in the late fattening period, the substitution rate should be limited to 10% so that the crude fat content of the feed is less than 5%, which is considered a guideline to prevent soft fat pigs from occurring. In other words, based on the high fat content in the feed as a guide, it appears that a 10-20% substitution ratio is possible, although it will vary depending on the stage of growth.
Currently, the annual production of compound feed for swine in Japan is about 6.2 million tons. The main raw materials are corn (2.9 million tons), milo (about 1.1 million tons), and soybean meal (870,000 tons). On the other hand, business-related waste covered by the Food Recycling Law amounts to 6 million tons of general business waste and 3.4 million tons of industrial waste. If all of this were dried and processed, roughly one-fifth, if not impossible, 620,000 tons could be utilized with a 10% blend, and 1.4 million tons with a 20% blend. This figure should be enough to cover the 20% reduction target of the Food Recycling Law.
Dry or Liquid?
There are two major methods of converting food waste into feed. One is the dry method, in which food waste is dried by dry heat or hot water dehydration, and the other is the liquid method, in which food waste is processed in a wet process.
One is the dry feeding method, in which food is dried. The other is the liquid feeding method.
The dry feeding method requires drying, but is relatively easy to transport and store. On the other hand, the liquid feeding method is used in Europe, where a large amount of whey is produced by the dairy industry. There is no cost for drying, but in Japan, where summer temperatures are high, it is necessary to be careful about sanitary control of the vip and feed adjustment layer. Not limited to feed made from food waste, many pig farms in Japan are currently adopting dry feeding systems, and the dry feeding system seems to be more flexible when transportation costs and other factors are taken into account.
For example, Sanzo Organic Recycling built a food waste recycling plant in the Sapporo City Recycling Complex, and since January 1997, under the guidance of the Sapporo City (Mayor: Mr. Nobuo Katsura) Cleaning Department, has been recycling food waste from schools, hotels, restaurants, food processing plants, and other businesses in the city, supplied by the Sapporo City Environmental Service Corporation. The plant is a "oil-temperature, reduced-pressure, and high-temperature" recycling plant.
The plant uses the "oil-temperature decompression dehydration method," which uses the same principle as deep-frying tempura to dehydrate and dry food waste in a sealed, decompressed container. 35 tons of commercial food waste is processed in 10 hours per day, and 7 tons of feed and fertilizer materials are produced per day. After conducting various suitability tests for use as livestock feed, the plant submitted an application to the Distribution and Feed Division of the Livestock Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries in February 1999, and was approved for provisional values as a feed compounding material. Currently, the company is developing sales of feed compounding materials to feed consumers through compound feed manufacturers, and is also strengthening sales of plants.
Okadora (Yokohama City), an environmental equipment manufacturer, has developed equipment that boils and dries food waste and converts it into animal feed. The company claims that the system can reduce both construction and operating costs by less than half compared to conventional systems by making the drying process more efficient. Construction costs range from 10 to 20 million yen per ton of daily processing volume. The running cost for processing one ton of raw garbage is estimated at 4,000 to 5,000 yen.
In addition, the company plans to develop a distribution network for food waste feed in cooperation with trading companies and feed companies. The food waste is dried in a proprietary boiling dryer, reduced to one-fifth to one-tenth its original weight, and after foreign matter is removed, the food waste is sterilized at high temperatures and the fats and oils are removed in a degreaser before being converted into animal feed. The feed conversion equipment is marketed to supermarkets, restaurants, and other businesses that generate large volumes of food waste. On the other hand, the company intends to sell only the boiling dryer to small-lot customers, including the establishment of a recycling system that takes back the dried products and converts them into feed in bulk.
Building a system through a cooperative
However, as with composting, there are of course many obstacles to overcome when considering feed conversion as a business. In particular, when looking at commercial food waste, there are the issues of sorting out foreign matter and salt, which affect the quality of the feed; ensuring collection volume and lot control; and quality control to comply with the Feed Safety Law. In addition, although the taste of pigs is good, they may receive a low rating. It is difficult for food-related businesses and pig producers, many of which are small to medium in size, to establish their own independent systems.
Therefore, there is a movement to establish a feed conversion system by forming a cooperative. The National Food Recycling Cooperative Association (Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture) has been working on this concept for the past five years, and it is expected to be realized in FY2001.
The food recycling business conducted by the cooperative is shown in Table 1. In the "flow of things," recyclable food resources are discharged by the discharging company and converted into animal feed at a food recycling plant. The feed then passes through a pig farmer and a food processing company, and finally returns to the emitter in the form of meat. In terms of the "flow of money," the waste-producing companies pay the processing consignment fee, which is then used to convert the waste into animal feed at the food recycling plant. The resulting feed is then supplied to the pig farmer, and the pork produced is returned to the emitting company in the same manner as contract farming. In that case, they are still required to pay for the purchase of meat, but they are provided with pork that is better quality, cheaper, and safer than conventional ones.
In other words, the concept is to create a company with all the parties involved, and to create a recycling system that balances supply and demand and eliminates waste in distribution, sales, and other expenses within the company established by all the parties. As a result of a demonstration test conducted in 1999 with assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), we have achieved a certain level of prospect in evaluating the functionality and reliability of the overall system and the quality of recycling. The first bilot model of a practical plant by a PFI corporation is scheduled to be installed in Nagoya in FY2001.
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