What I found most intriguing in The Compost King of New York was the initial driving force for Charles Vigliotti to start his company, American Organic Energy, was the business and profitable opportunities he saw in this business. His company takes kitchen scraps and turns it into energy through anaerobic digestion. The difference between anaerobic digestion and composting is that under normal composting, organisms naturally oxidize organic matter under layers of waste. This process turns the compost from a pile of energy into nutrient rich fertilizer but may also release carbon dioxide. Anaerobic digestion on the other hand, uses no oxygen and the materials are sealed off. I think the idea of using our wastes and turning it into renewable energy is a good one, but we shouldn’t depend on technology like this (that is expensive and still wastes a lot of energy in other ways) to get rid of our faults in consumerism. Before we set out to deal with our over production of waste, especially in a city like New York “which generates about one million tons of organic waste a year”, we should try to stop wasting so much food in transit and table in the first place. There is a lot of waste being produced from restaurants, school cafeterias and our own homes of food that is still useful and could be distributed. As a community we need to work to educate and spread awareness about consumerism and what happens to the products we throw out. Not only is produce expensive, but every time we throw out food from our kitchens (that most of the time is still edible) we need to think about all the energy exerted on each item we have purchased. It’s not only expensive in means of the price attached at a super market, but it is expensive to the environment in terms of wasted energy exerted in producing, transporting and packaging items for us to use. This problem is costing our environment a lot of resources and is leading us to come up with other solutions (also expensive) to deal with our actions. So i think this idea of composting and digesting to create renewable energy from our wastes, is a great one, but i do think we need to take a greater look at what is casings to have so much waste in the first place.
