Dive Brief:

• Israel-based HomeBiogas has created a $995 domestic-scale anaerobic digester for consumers that converts organic waste into cooking gas and liquid fertilizer.
• With its built-in tank that stores 400 liters of gas, the self-assembled system handles about 6 liters of food waste or up to 15 liters of animal manure each day. Each liter of food waste produces enough gas to cook for one hour; HomeBiogas can generate about two to three hours of cooking gas daily. The system can generate five to 10 liters of fertilizer a day.
• The company said in a video that 150 installed home units have been running for over a year. CE-certified, the product has been tested and approved for safety and health by the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure.

Dive Insight:

HomeBiogas comes on line at a time when large companies are investing millions to hundreds of millions in commercial scale biogas, and others are in early stages of research and development of similar products.

While these small consumer-sized digesters may affect those large companies looking to capitalize on this service, the digesters will have a positive impact on federal food waste reduction efforts. These efforts target consumers to divert food scraps and organic waste from the solid waste stream, and the HomeBiogas digesters may be a crucial tool in helping them do so. 

Some industrial-level companies have started on a smaller scale hoping to be ahead of the curve as the waste-to-energy movement expands. It will be interesting to see, as technology and business models evolve, which stakeholders will capitalize on which markets — from both the commercial and non-business consumer markets — and to see which biogas product types take off, as well as whether one niche impacts business for the other.