Frito-Lay has a factory in Casa Grande, Arizona where more than 500,000 pounds of potatoes arrive everyday and are washed, sliced, fried, seasoned and seperated into bags of Lay’s and Ruffles chips. The process takes up a lot of energy and creates vast amounts of wastewater, starch and potato peelings. So, Frito-Lay with the backing of it's parent company PepsiCo have come up with a new cocept - Net Zero which will attempt to take Casa Grande plant off the power grid by running it almost entirely on renewable fuels and recycled water.

The retrofit is planned to be completed in 2010 and will include installation of high tech filters to recycle most of the water used to rinse and wash potatoes and then burn the leftover sludge to create methane gas to run the plant's boiler. The company also plans to build 50 acres of solar concentrators behind the plan tot generate solar power. As well, there will be a biomass generator which will turn agricultural waste to additional renewable fuel. The company estimates that the change will reduce the plant's electricity and water consumption by 90%, its natural gas use by 80% and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50-75%.

Read the full story at NewYork Times

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