Case study shows benefits of wastewater management
Food in Canada
Food In Canada Research & Development Sustainability Bake & Snack Food Beverages Confectionery Dairy Fruit & Vegetables Ingredients & Additives Meat &Poultry Pet Food Seafood Specialty Foods bakeries case study food and beverageBLOOM, a Toronto organization that helps companies become more sustainable, carried out a pilot project on a bakery that shows wastewater management reduces the need and cost for other solutions
assorted pastry and bread Toronto – BLOOM, an organization that helps companies become more sustainable, has released a case study on wastewater management and Ontario’s bakery industry.
The case study is called Driving Adoption of Innovative Solutions in Ontario’s Bakery Sector – Demonstrating the Approach and Benefits of Source Reduction as Part of Wastewater Management.
In a statement, BLOOM says the first step for any company in food and beverage processing “is a structured review of current practices and their impact.”
BLOOM explains that if companies can reduce “wastewater volume and strength through practice improvements, any treatment solution that might still be required will be reduced in both size and cost. It also allows a processor to consider more innovative solutions that might not have been feasible before implementation of the process improvements.”
The case study involves a bakery that is growing but has found with that growth “unanticipated issues related to water and wastewater management.”
In this bakery’s case, says BLOOM, “the bakery is faced with the need to install a relatively expensive ‘end-of-pipe’ wastewater treatment plant. The company recognized that a better approach was to first go ‘up-stream’ and identify opportunities to modify existing operations and implement better practices to reduce effluent load and wastewater strength.”
BLOOM says in the case study that it “shadowed” the company as it went through all the steps in manufacturing to analyze everything that contributed to wastewater, such as fats, oil and grease, biological oxygen demand, total kjeldahl nitrogen, total phosphorous and total suspended solids.
In this way BLOOM was able to identify the “hot spots” and devise ways “to reduce the wastewater strength.”
The case study, which makes for interesting reading for any bakery and other food and beverage processors who are exploring water, resource and wastewater management, can be found here.
BLOOM says it may be a good idea to read the case study before looking at on-site treatment solutions.
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