Hamburgers, chips, onion rings. It's not your typical drive-through menu, but these are the food scraps from the restaurants and hotels of Disney World, which for some time now have been converted into biogas at a cogeneration plant just a stone's throw from the world's most famous amusement park.

©HarvestPower.com

Every day, food waste and food scraps are sorted and collected, then transported to the Harvest Power Superpowered Energy Garden biogas plant. Here, through anaerobic digestion, the scraps and pre-treated wastewater are converted into methane and carbon dioxide. The gas is then used to power the turbines that generate electricity, including for the amusement park's various attractions. The digestate (that is, the organic compound resulting from the anaerobic digestion of the scraps) is used as an organic fertiliser in agriculture.

The cogeneration plant is capable of processing 120,000 tonnes of organic waste per year and has a capacity of 5.4 MW, combining heat and electricity. The facility is in fact able to serve the 2 million residents living in the Orlando area. This is an important example of a circular economy and, as Marc Gunther wrote in the Guardian: "A potential solution to food waste." Just consider the figures for Disney World alone: 50 million visitors every year. Staggering numbers. And a quantity of organic waste that, at least in part, in this case does not end up in landfill, but instead becomes renewable energy.

Cover image ©periodismoactual.com