Singapore-based IUT Global has begun building an organic waste treatment plant in Tuas that is set to be the first and largest of its kind in Asia.
The S$60 million facility will specialise in converting food and other organic waste into biogas and compost materials.
The plant, to be completed in 2007, will have the capacity to churn a quarter of Singapore's food waste into electricity and compost materials.
The facility will also help achieve the government's food waste recycling target of 30% by 2012.
IUT Global's CEO, Edwin Khew, said: "By the time 2012 comes, we're confident we're going to have the second phase fully running and operational and we would have gone beyond the government's Green Plan projections."
At half a million tonnes last year, food waste makes up nearly one-tenth of Singapore's total waste.
With the new plant, IUT Global says it will be able to generate enough electricity for itself and over 10,000 other industrial facilities.
Its biggest challenge lies in getting mass food operators like hotels, food courts and factories to sort out their trash properly.
Edwin Khew said: "For us to be effective and to be profitable, we need obviously to go ahead and educate all these organic waste or food waste generators how best to segregate their waste so that we try and collect as pure food waste as organic waste as possible."
At the ground-breaking ceremony on Thursday, Environment Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said the government would step up its efforts to encourage companies to join the recycling movement.
Dr Yaacob said: "We want to recycle as much as possible. But we cannot push recycling unless there's a back-end to it, which is such a facility.....So there's a win-win situation for us....We want to help further this process by encouraging entrepreneurs to put back a bit of money together with the government to do research in some of these areas."
IUT Global is working with local universities to study organisms that can achieve better yields for its production process. - CNA/ir