In China’s hotpot capital Chengdu, restaurant customers dip slices of meat and vegetables into a spicy, oily broth. Little did they know that their remains would have a second life as jet fuel.
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Every year, factories in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province (southwest China), where fondue is a regional pride, produce 150,000 tons of waste from this red and fatty liquid.
A blessing for the local company Jinshang, which processes this precious broth. After filtering, it is exported before being converted into fuel for the aviation industry.
“Our motto is: Let waste oil fly into the sky!” Jinshang chief Ye Bin told AFP.
His company produces up to 150,000 tons of industrial-grade oil every year, using fat from fondue broths, but also from other establishments in Chengdu, such as the fast food chain KFC.
Every evening, Jinshang debt collectors go on tour to hundreds of restaurants in the city.
Once customers leave, servers pour the broths into a filter to separate the oil from the water.
AFP
To protect themselves from the scarlet grease, collectors wear thick aprons and elbow-length rubber gloves and then collect these canisters of caustic liquid.
“It’s a great job! I play mahjong during the day and work at night,” one of those agents, Mr Zheng, told AFP happily as he loaded cans of the thick mixture into a commercial vehicle.
AFP
Mountains of garbage
This sludge is transported to the Jinshang plant on the outskirts of Chengdu.
They are then poured into large vats before undergoing a refining process that removes any remaining water and impurities. Result: an industrial grade oil, light yellow color.
AFP
This product is then exported to customers mainly located in Europe, the United States and Singapore. They are the ones who then convert it into “sustainable aviation fuel” (CDA).
This type of fuel can help reduce the carbon footprint of the aviation sector, which accounted for 2% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions related to energy consumption in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
However, CDA represents less than 0.1% of the fuel currently used by aircraft. It’s about the processing costs and the small number of suppliers.
AFP
However, at the cost of a “massive increase in production”, they could “contribute around 65% to the emissions reduction needed for the aviation sector to reach net zero emissions in 2050”, according to the International Air Transport Association (Iata).
Jinshang is now aiming to build its own CDA production facility.
China is redoubling its efforts to combat mountains of food waste generated by its 1.4 billion people.
Ravenous maggots
According to a study published in the journal Nature in 2021, around 350 million tons of agricultural products, or more than a quarter of annual production, are wasted in the country every year by restaurants, supermarkets or consumers.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rotting food waste in landfills emits methane, a greenhouse gas, faster than most other materials.
China recently released a plan to combat methane emissions that includes building innovative projects to treat food waste.
Shanghai, for example, uses the larvae of the “black soldier fly” (Hermetia illucens) to recycle this waste.
The Laogang processing plant houses 500 million maggots in a huge room, devouring up to 2,500 tons of leftover food every day, said Wu Yuefeng, the plant’s deputy director.
When they defecate, these larvae excrete a substance that serves as fertilizer. As soon as they are well fattened, they themselves are processed into feed for farm animals.