Come October 1st, new state regulations will change how old and unwanted commercial food is disposed of in Massachusetts. Under the new regulations, any entity that discards a ton or more of food per week must donate or re-purpose the useable food. For spoiled food, one option is to convert it into clean energy. And that’s what Stop & Shop is doing. A Stop & Shop Distribution Center in Freetown is gearing up to install its own on-site system that uses spoiled food from its retail stores to generate electricity.
At 1.1 million square feet, the Stop & Shop warehouse and distribution center in Freetown has the feel of an airline hangar. Inside the cavernous facility, automated cranes zoom along rows of 20 to 30 foot high shelves, lifting off pallets of packaged food and transferring them onto conveyor belts. From there, the pallets are sent out to 213 Stop & Shop retail stores in New England. Powering such a massive operation requires 17 million kilowatt hours of electricity each year. By next Spring, roughly 40 percent of those power needs will be handled by a new on-site facility, according to Stop & Shop consultant Greg O’Brien.
“It’ll be enclosed in 12,000 square feet, and it’s a clean-energy processing operation for unsold or outdated food materials that cannot be sold to customers or donated to food pantries,” O’Brien said.
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