Proving that there’s life beyond the dumpster for wasted food, a U.K. store just became the first in the country to be totally powered by leftovers. The Guardian reports that a Sainsbury’s store in the West Midlands of the U.K. is set to leave the national power grid in favor of food power created through the anaerobic digestion of food scraps – via a partnership with waste recycling company Biffa.
Sainsbury’s, a popular U.K. retail chain, is already the country’s largest user of food energy and anaerobic digestion – it produces enough power to light up 2,500 homes each year. Now they have a store that will be 100 percent powered by food. Leftover food from Sainsbury’s supermarket in Cannock gets trucked to the nearby Biffa plant where it’s turned into bio-methane gas that’s then used to generate electricity that’s sent back to the store via a 1.5-kilometer-long transmission line.