£24m digester site is unveiled

This giant new 'digester' plant is claimed to be the answer to the country's energy crisis – converting our slop buckets to electricity.

Waste firm Biffa has unveiled the country's first super anaerobic digestion plant in Cannock, which will process up to 120,000 tons of waste every year.

The £24 million food digestion plant is the UK's biggest and the company says it hopes similar plants will be built across the country to convert waste food scraps into usable electricity.

The Government is keen to introduce kitchen slop buckets into every home with the waste then being sent to the plants by local authorities.

Currently no local authorities in Staffordshire and the Black Country are sending waste to the site – however, Wolverhampton City Council sends slop bucket waste to Lower Reule Bioenergy, a £3m Anaerobic Digestion facility, in Gnosall.

Pub giant Wetherspoons has begun sending food scraps from some of its local pubs to the new site.

Source segregated food waste from supermarkets, food and drink manufacturers, hotels, restaurants, caterers and homes is also delivered to the site from Biffa's collection network and fed in to the digester to transform 120,000 tons of scraps into six megawatts of power which provide enough power to fuel 6,000 homes, 24 hours a day.

The Poplars site – equal in size to two football pitches – dwarfs previous processing plants.