Today’s Solutions: January 11, 2025

A vitamin-rich tomato is perfect for boosting your energy, but for all the rotten or damaged tomatoes that never reach your plate and end up in the landfill along with the unwanted tomato skins and seeds from processed products like ketchup, the result is a major production of methane, which only helps to speed up climate change. To mitigate the negative effects of tomato waste, a group of researchers have developed a special microbial fuel cell to process the waste and turn it into electricity. It uses bacteria to break down the organic material, oxidizing it and generating an electrical charge. At the end of the process there is still tomato, but its chemical content has been broken down and treated, meaning no emissions. The process would be perfect for states like Florida, which produces nearly 400,000 tons of tomato waste each year. Convert that annual waste into clean energy and you could have enough electricity to power Disney World for 90 days.

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