EPA honors Crystal Creamery for anaerobic digester partnership

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has honored Crystal Creamery with the Food Recovery Challenge National Innovation Award at the company’s dairy processing plant in Modesto, California.

As part of EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge, organizations pledge to improve their sustainable food management practices and report their results. Crystal Creamery aims to achieve zero waste by 2020 and currently diverts more than 98 percent of materials from landfills through reuse, recycling, composting and anaerobic digestion.

Crystal Creamery has partnered with Fiscalini Farms, a nearby farm with anaerobic digesters, to process its wastewater byproduct along with manure and other dairy byproducts into electricity. After the award ceremony, officials toured Fiscalini Farm’s state-of-the-art anaerobic digester facility where digesters use bacteria to break down manure and dairy byproducts into methane biogas to generate renewable energy, fertilizer and bedding for livestock at local farms. The anaerobic digesters, operated by Organic Solution Management LLC, can process and compost 200 tons per day of waste and produce 1 megawatt.