“Green Machine” Liquefies Waste
By John Abule for FOX2now.com & KPLR11.com
4:28 PM CDT, April 21, 2010
ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI & KPLR) – A St. Louis catering company is blazing a new trail for waste management. Butler’s Pantry at 14th and Park is turning garbage into water. They’ve come up with a process to send it flowing through sewers instead of sitting in landfills.
Butler’s Pantry is an industry giant. They may rack up $5 million in revenue before this year is out. That adds up to a lot of garbage. Worried about filling up landfills, they made an investment a month ago. They spent $40 thousand for a foreign-made appliance called “The Green Machine.”
Richard Nix, Jr., Butler’s Pantry President says “We didn’t try to focus on dollars and cents. We tried to focus on how we could make the environment a little bit better.”
Basically, biodegradable waste goes in and a rather clear liquid comes out during a 24-hour cycle. Imported from South Korea, the machines are big in Europe where landfill space is at a premium.
But this is the only one of its kind in the Midwest.
“We’re doing about 250 pounds of trash a day in the machine over the past three weeks,” Nix says.
The waste water has passed all purity tests. Butler’s Pantry officials say they’ve been given the seal of approval by both the Metropolitan Sewer District and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.