OSHKOSH – Your trash and yard waste could be someone else’s electricity for the year. We checked out new technology that will be used to help power the future.

It’s called an anaerobic biodigester. And UW-Oshkosh is building the first one in the United States. It will provide heat and electricity to much of the neighboring industrial area.

So how does it work? We asked Vice Chancellor Tom Sonnleitner at UW-Oshkosh.

“What it does is take yard waste and food waste and creates methane gas and then you turn that gas into electricity,” he explained. Sonnleitner called the project a living research tool for the whole community. Plus, it will provide power and heat for the neighborhood.

“We hope to provide heat to Fox Valley Technical College and other industrial sites nearby,” Sonnleitner said.

Leftover food from the campus and yard waste from the community will go into the digester. Methane gas released by the decomposition will be burned off to produce electricity and heat. The project is the latest in a series of green initiatives at the university.

“There are no silver bullets, no one single answer in eliminating the carbon footprint,” Sonnleitner said. But this is a good start.

The project is not without concners. Neighbors want to know if the biodigester will stink up the neighborhood.

Michael Lizotte, the director of sustainability for UW-Oshkosh, dispelled those fears.

“We’re moving composting indoors and that way we capture all the gases, we can take care of any odors, and so it fits an urban setting,” he said. Lizotte said biodigester is a great next step in going green on campus.

“We have students saying, what are we doing with our food? What do we do with yardwaste? They know about home composting and things like that, and they’re just wondering where our big compost pile is.”

The green project is the latest in a series in the Fox Valley. Giant windmills already line Highway 41 near Oshkosh, and nearby dairy farms turn their waste into “cow power.”

“We think we’re the leader in the state, a leader in the midwest and we want to continue down that path,” Sonnleitner said.

The groundbreaking is scheduled for May and the biodigester should be running by the end of the year.

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