The technology, called gas plasma, is claimed to create hydrogen gas and a non-toxic stone material from rubbish. The hydrogen can be used to drive turbines, which make electricity and heat, while the stone material could be used in building. APP says a plant treating 100,000 tonnes of waste could power more than 8,000 homes. The firm’s chief executive, Andrew Hamilton, said: “We think it is a very exciting breakthrough. It is a combination of existing technologies but we have made them work together. We are now taking it to commercial development. We think it has other applications, not only in the UK but around the world, because of the need to divert waste away from landfill and help achieve renewable energy targets.”

APP is currently securing sites around the UK and is hoping to persuade councils to let it process waste. It is also seeking potential clients, including electricity companies. “This operation would run 24 hours a day,” said Mr Hamilton. “It is not like wind power, which only blows occasionally. “This could put Swindon at the heart of plasma technology in the UK.” The company says only one per cent of waste treated in its plant would have to go to landfill. “It also promises to have one of the lowest carbon footprints of any power plant. APP has been developing the technique for three years after the technology was developed by Tectronics , a sister company based in Faringdon.

Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc. was founded in 2005. The Company’s technology removes phosphorus and other pollutants from wastewater and recycles them into environmentally safe commercial fertilizer. The Company’s first commercial-scale plant began operation in Edmonton, Alberta in 2007. The Company’s first commercial-scale plant in the U.S. will begin operating in the spring of 2009 at the Durham Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility in metropolitan Portland, Oregon.

Phillip Abrary, President and CEO of Ostara, said the financing will enable the Company to accelerate the commercialization of its technology to municipalities, ethanol biofuel plants and food processing plants in the U.S. and Canada at which successful field trials have already been completed. As many as 400 municipalities and industrial plants in North America and 500 in Europe are potential customers for the Ostara process.

“Over the past year, we have successfully demonstrated in a large commercial plant that our process handles sewage sludge liquids in a way that reduces operating costs, increases overall plant capacity, complies with environmental regulations and produces revenue from byproduct,” said Abrary.

Hydrogen has three times more potential energy by weight than petrol, making it the highest energy-content fuel available. Research into using bacteria to produce hydrogen has been revived thanks to the rising profile of energy issues.

We throw away a third of our food in the UK, wasting 7 million tonnes a year. The majority of this is currently sent to landfill where it produces gases like methane, which is a greenhouse gas 25 more potent than carbon dioxide. Following some major advances in the technology used to make “biohydrogen”, this waste can now be turned into valuable energy.

“There are special and yet prevalent circumstances under which micro-organisms have no better way of gaining energy than to release hydrogen into their environment,” said Dr Mark Redwood from the University of Birmingham. “Microbes such as heterotrophs, cyanobacteria, microalgae and purple bacteria all produce biohydrogen in different ways.”

When there is no oxygen, fermentative bacteria use carbohydrates like sugar to produce hydrogen and acids. Others, like purple bacteria, use light to produce energy (photosynthesis) and make hydrogen to help them break down molecules such as acids. These two reactions fit together as the purple bacteria can use the acids produced by the fermentation bacteria. Professor Lynne Macaskie’s Unit of Functional Bionanomaterials at the University of Birmingham has created two bioreactors that provide the ideal conditions for these two types of bacteria to produce hydrogen.

“By working together the two types of bacteria can produce much more hydrogen than either could alone,” said Dr Mark Redwood. “A significant challenge for the development of this process to a productive scale is to design a kind of photobioreactor that is cheap to construct and able to harvest light from a large area. A second issue is connecting the process with a reliable supply of sugary feedstock.”

With a more advanced pre-treatment, biohydrogen can even be produced from the waste from food-crop cultivation, such as corn stalks and husks. Tens of millions of tonnes of this waste is produced every year in the UK. Diverting it from landfill into biohydrogen production addresses both climate change and energy security.

The University of Birmingham has teamed up with Modern Waste Ltd and EKB Technology Ltd to form Biowaste2energy Ltd, which will develop and commercialise this waste to energy technology.

“In a final twist, the hydrogenase enzymes in the leftover bacteria can be used to scavenge precious metals from spent automotive catalysts to help make fuel cell that converts hydrogen into electricity,” said Professor Lynne Macaskie. “So nothing is wasted and an important new application can be found for today’s waste mountain in tomorrow’s non-fossil fuel transport and energy.”

From materials provided by the Society for Microbiology

Max has never set foot in a Third World country but he now hopes to change that. He wants to take his idea to aid organisations which help throughout the Third World to develop it further – and to travel and see first-hand conditions in some of the world’s poorest countries. Max’s design converts kinetic energy in wind into electrical energy stored in a battery and he has designed it so it could be made from a wide variety of scrap found locally.

He said: “My dad wanted to do something like this but I beat him to it. He had the idea of designing a scrap wind turbine but it was my idea to use it in the developing world. I wanted to design and build something worthwhile and I am also interested in design being environmentally friendly.”

Dad Ashley studied mechanical engineering at the University of Portsmouth 20 years ago and one of his classmates was John Bishop who later became a lecturer and Max’s tutor. Max has designed the wind turbine to be affordable, sustainable and help those in the poorest parts of the world. His prototype was built using scrap found on roadsides and in front gardens.

Max has just been awarded a first class honours degree in product design and modern materials from the Department of Mechanical and Design Engineering. He comes from a family of if not engineers then people who can and do make, adapt and tinker with machines. His father had once mentioned he would like to come up with a sustainable and cheap form of energy production but Max took the seed of the idea further and developed a product for his final project.

He said: “I am interested in everything from Nanotechnology to traditional technologies and the course has equipped me to use old and new. The wind turbine I have designed is 1.8m wide so it isn’t too much of a burden on the surrounding environment. The prototype generates 11.3 watts and charges a battery which when fully charged could run lighting for 63 hours or a radio for about 30 hours.
“This isn’t going to change lives in the developing world dramatically but a device like this could make their lives a lot easier. It cost me £20 to build the prototype and in the developing world it would be a lot less. The nearest alternative wind turbine on the market costs £2,000.”

Since graduating Max has been accepted onto the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship ‘Flying Start’ scheme.

The guide was first started in August 2006 and is now in its eighth edition.

It ranks the top market leaders of the mobile phone, computer, TV and games console markets according to their policies and practices on toxic chemicals and recycling.

The organisation said that the guide has already led to a reduction in the amount of toxic chemicals being used in the electronics industry.

“We know that brands are putting pressure on their suppliers to meet our commitments,” said Ms Kruszewska.

The latest guide also includes new stricter guidelines.

“For this edition we tightened the e-waste and chemical criteria and we also added a new energy requirement,” said Ms Kruszewska.

The new energy guidelines score a company for disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions, their commitment to absolute cuts in their own emissions and support for mandatory global emissions reductions.

In particular, Greenpeace has asked companies to state support for a “strong post Kyoto agreement” on their international websites.

“We see companies scoring zero on all energy criteria,” added Ms Kruszewska.

“Clearly it is going to take companies some time to improve on our demands,”

The latest guide also assessed the energy efficiency of a selection of each company’s products to see if they meet or exceed the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star rating.