Activity report
Recycling as resources once again
Turning
unavoidable
leftover food
into energy
Background of the challenge
The problem of
waste from
non-production
sectors had not
been addressed
in the past
Our Toyohashi Plant, having set the goal of net zero environmental impact, had long been working to reduce waste generated in the production process. At the same time, it had been unsuccessful in taking measures against waste generated in non-production areas. We are talking mainly of leftover food from the cafeteria. Leftover food and vegetable peelings are discarded every day, and in 2019 food waste amounted to 78 kg a day, partly due to the fact that information on personnel shifts was not shared across departments. For this reason, the Toyohashi Plant began focusing on reducing food waste and has been taking counter measures since October 2019.
Our idea
Making effective use
of waste that cannot
be further reduced
To reduce food waste, our Countermeasures Team first collected information on the number of personnel eating at the cafeteria and shared it with the cafeteria operator with the goal of optimizing the amount of dishes prepared. At the same time, they further improved the situation by bringing pre-processed vegetables into the factory to avoid discarding peelings. As a result, daily food waste was reduced to 24 kg per day as of May 2023, a reduction of 54 kg. While the above initiatives were partly successful, waste was still being generated that could not be further reduced. The Countermeasures Team set to work thinking of ways to make more effective use of leftovers. Right at that time, an effort to generate biogas using food waste from the cafeteria was underway at the Sanage factory, so they emulated that initiative and tried to use it for power generation.
Activity Report
Overcoming
municipal
boundaries
for the future
of the region
In order to maximize the effectiveness of this initiative, the Toyohashi Plant management, in addition to its own plant, approached other nearby companies in an effort to collect a total of about 180 kg/day of leftover food to generate power. However, an ordinance stipulating that general waste cannot be moved across municipal lines prevented the plan from being implemented at first. After persistent negotiations with Toyohashi City and Tahara City, in which the plant emphasized the importance of reducing waste throughout the region, it finally became possible to move leftover food from one city to another by handling it as "fuel". Thus, the Toyohashi Plant's biogas power generation equipment became operative in July 2024. It currently generates 4 to 12 kWh per day. In the future, it is expected to provide electricity to local evacuation centers and employees of nearby companies through mobile compact chargers as part of BCP initiatives.
Click here to see the details of biogas power generation.
Challenger
Toyohashi Plant
Biogas Power
Generation Team
