A small local company has big plans to help divert food waste from landfills and clean up the water heading to our treatment plants.
EarthBio Technologies (EBtech) of Glenside has recently launched a kitchen sink device called ScrapDrain™.
Assembled locally, ScrapDrain is a green alternative to a garbage disposal that saves the nutrient value of food scrap in the process. Users can rinse and wash dishes as normal while ScrapDrain strains away the liquid, separates solids, and prepares a one-step easy transfer for composting.
The deep filter basket inside ScrapDrain has more capacity and collection ability than any other sink strainer on the market, according to the company. EarthBio understands that ScrapDrain is just a small step in the food chain but, as their marketing points out, they believe that it’s the “missing link from the kitchen sink.”
The company also acknowledges that the underlying facts about food waste has driven their mission to create “a better way for today.” Uneaten food is the single largest source of trash in landfills by weight, generating nearly 11% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide and accounts for 18% of the methane pollution in the US alone. According to the EPA, methane is 25 times more heat trapping than carbon dioxide.
There is a long-standing belief that garbage disposals are eco-friendly. As Douglas Horner, managing director of EarthBio points out, “The operating facts suggest otherwise since garbage disposals use lots of electricity, loads of extra water, and produce a slurry of solids.” This slurry, according to Horner, travels into our waterways to our wastewater treatment plants where the solids are screened out and trucked off to landfill.
“A cycle of futility”, Horner says.
For over 25 years, EarthBio has worked with commercial food service facilities providing bio-formulas to degrade fats, oils, and grease (FOG) in drain systems. These bio treatments remediate grease very well but have only limited success with solids and food waste. To create a solution, the staff at EB decided to design a solids separator to help. The idea caught on and now ScrapDrain is poised to be in the homes and kitchens across the country.
For more information on EarthBio Technologies, you can visit www.earthbio.com or email info@earthbio.com. For more on ScrapDrain, you can check out this information:
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