Enter Ben & Jerry, who have teamed up with Paques, a biotechnology company, to install a bio-digester in their Hellendoorn ice cream factory in the Netherlands. The new bio-digester will take excess food product that is wasted during the making of ice cream and turn it into power to provide energy for the factory.

Unilever, the global corporation that owns the Ben & Jerry’s brand, opted for a new type of bio-digester, the BIOPAQ AFR, in which 24 quadrillion, or 24,000,000,000,000,000 – natural micro-organisms ‘eat’ waste products and convert them into biogas.

The bio-digester stands out because it uses just one compact reactor that can treat water, oils, and excess food product in one place instead of a series of complex reactors that each work on a piece of the larger puzzle.

Unfortunately, I find this a total waste of ice cream, who ever heard about ‘excess’ ice cream. I would rather suck the earth dry of every living plant an animal than use precious ice cream for running a factory, come on now!

[Cheers cleantechnica.com]