Whey to go

Dairy waste becomes bioethanol

German yoghurt giant Müller - best known for its ‘Fruit Corners’ - is branching out into biofuel. The company has announced that it will build the world’s first plant to manufacture bioethanol from dairy waste products.

Whey permeate, a natural by-product when whey is filtered to remove the protein, is traditionally fed to pigs. But Müller has worked out that it can be fermented with the addition of yeast and distilled to produce 99.8% pure bioethanol for use as fuel. With an investment of €20 million to build the plant in Germany, the milk mogul aims to produce 10 million litres of biofuel supplement a year from 2008.

Germany has already announced that it is on track to beat the EU’s target of 5.75% usage of biofuels for transportation by 2010. But the enthusiasm for biofuels has come under fire recently, amid growing concern about diverting cropland from food to bioethanol production, and fears that the race to grow oil cash crops is endangering natural environments. In Indonesia, for instance, vast tracts of peatland rainforest, in which billions of tonnes of carbon are sequestered, are being cleared and planted with oil palms (palm oil being by far the cheapest currently available biofuel). Almuth Ernsting of  the campaign group Biofuelwatch (www.biofuelwatch.org.uk) says there is “overwhelming evidence that, at a global level, biofuel expansion is increasing carbon emissions and accelerating global warming.”

Can dairy waste products offer a more viable alternative? According to Ernsting “the use of true waste products for biofuels can be a sustainable option, though it can only supply a small amount of our energy.” - Anna Blackaby