Today we visited the Huayan Environmental Kitchen Waste Treatment Factory in Suzhou Industrial Park to learn how kitchen waste is transformed into usable resources after collection from households. Here’s what we discovered.
The Industrial Park generates approximately 500 tons of kitchen waste daily. Huayan Environmental’s transport vehicles continuously collect this waste from homes, cafeterias, and shopping malls, delivering it to the Huayan Environmental Kitchen Waste Treatment Center. Through a series of processes including mechanical secondary sorting, pulping, oil removal, and anaerobic fermentation, the factory produces biogas, digestate, and crude oil. The biogas is purified to meet Class II natural gas standards and directly fed into the municipal gas network for residential use. The digestate is processed into nutrient-rich soil within the facility for landscaping maintenance. Waste oils extracted from the food waste undergo further treatment and can be reused as biodiesel. Beyond food waste, green waste like pruned branches and fallen leaves from the park is also recycled. Processed through specialized equipment, this green waste is transformed into biomass fuel pellets several centimeters long, serving as fuel for thermal power plants.
Team members marveled, “We never imagined kitchen waste could be recycled in so many ways beyond feeding pigs! It’s truly eye-opening!” We’ve sourced CCTV’s interview with Huayan Environment for everyone to learn from!