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"Food waste, institutional food waste is what we're targeting. Material, which currently goes off to the landfill or is composted," said David Johnson with SUNY ESF.

We're also interested in what we call the post consumer material, the fish sandwiches, the half-eaten pizza, meat products, egg products. Those things don't normally go for composting, but they're wonderful for an anaerobic digester.

Dr. David Johnson is building an anaerobic digester.

It's an engineering, mechanical device that uses bacteria to break down organic food waste to liquid and gas. The gas that's produced is mainly methane with some carbon dioxide. And methane is an energy resource.

This is a methane digester at Morrisville State College. It uses manure from their dairy farm to power a generator that produces electricity.

The typical rule of thumb developed from experience with agricultural digesters and we're using a very similar design, one third of the methane produced is used locally to heat and stir the operation and about two-thirds of that can be exported.

"This anaerobic digester is being designed for use by the village of Minoa. Biosolids, human waste, from their wastewater treatment plant could be turned into energy instead of being trucked to a landfill," said Steve Giarusso, Minoa wastewater Treatment Supervisor.

This is what we want to create energy with, instead of going to a landfill. Our goal is to combine the liquid biosolids with food waste, pre-consumer and post-consumer food waste and run it into an anaerobic digester.

Then the anaerobic digester produces methane gas. Some of it is used to produce electricity to help power the wastewater treatment operation, while the balance of the methane will be used to power the village's new garbage truck.