What else?

The City of Hamilton’s methane sphere stores biogas which can be used to produce electricity or renewable natural gas at its wastewater treatment plant. Peter Bromley/City of Hamilton

It can be hard to imagine household food waste producing anything more than a putrid odour. But it’s also a potential energy source.

In Canadian municipalities with green bin programs, household organics are collected at the curb and sent to a central facility where they are broken down by microorganisms. One result of this process is something called raw biogas.

A growing number of these cities are upgrading that biogas (from a methane concentration of 55 to 60 per cent to 90 per cent or more) to produce what is called renewable natural gas (RNG). RNG is similar in quality to conventional natural gas and can be injected into a natural gas pipeline to heat buildings and fuel vehicles.

The City of Toronto, for example, is getting into the RNG business by expanding and upgrading one of its organics processing facilities. Once the equipment is installed this year, the biogas will be “purified” to RNG and injected into Enbridge’s natural gas grid.

“It seems like such a no-brainer, in my mind,” said Carlyle Khan, a director in Toronto’s solid waste management department. “I don’t understand why other municipalities aren’t doing it.”

Click here to read the full report originally published by CBC News.