How a Quebec Town Is Being Powered by Yogurt

Saint-Hyacinthe is a town of 50,000 nestled in the heart of Southern Quebec's farmland.

It's not exactly the kind of place you would expect to be fuelled by a cutting-edge biomethane project and discarded yogurt, but that's exactly what's happening.

The municipality recently penned a deal with Yoplait Liberté which would see the yogurt conglomerate send any spoiled or expired dairy to St-Hyacinthe.

Under that agreement, the expired or spoiled yogurt would be sent to the town's state-of-the-art natural gas processing plant and converted into natural gas to heat and power municipal buildings and vehicles.

MUNCHIES spoke with St-Hyacinthe spokesperson Brigitte Massé about how this recent yogurt deal as well as the environmental implications of turning rotten food into fuel.

"We already had the infrastructure in place to take on this project," Massé told MUNCHIES. "We've been transforming the materials from 23 cities as well as organic materials from a number of nearby agricultural businesses like Liberté yogurt."

Massé says that they were initially approached by the yogurt company, who was impressed by the financial and environmental incentives offered by St-Hyacinthe. "They approached us. They were looking for a way to dispose of their organic material which was more ecological than having a bunch of trucks drive it to landfills."

In other words, if the cooling breaks in a huge yogurt truck, instead of having it drive to a landfill and throw our all of its contents, the spoiled yogurt would arrive at the St-Hyacinthe processing plant. From there, all of the organic material gets separated from inorganic plastic wrapping and then puréed.

"At that point it's almost a soup, and we send that soup to huge silos which heat and ferment the liquid which creates biomethane after about 28 days. That biomethane is what gets used to heat our municipal buildings and power our trucks."

The town's biomethane plant is part of pioneering project that takes aim at St-Hyacinthe unique location within the province's agricultural community.

"St-Hyacinthe is a agrobusiness hub," Massé says. "There are a lot of nearby food companies and it costs them a lot less money to send the food to our processing plant than it does to send it to the landfill. It's more economically viable for businesses but it's also better for the environment."

The $50 million initiative was financed in equal parts by local, provincial, and federal governments and the town hopes that it will eventually become profitable selling excess gas commercially.

"Not only are we polluting less, but we're spending $500,000 less per year on municipal vehicles and heating, and also making money by selling what's left to gas companies." The municipality expects to produce some 13 million cubic metres of natural gas per year.

"We're the first city in North America to do this, but they've been doing this in Europe for a while in countries like France, Germany, and Switzerland. So we adapted European technology to the reality in Quebec," says Massé.

And adapting to the realities of Canada means that hockey will be involved somehow. "Our agreement with Liberté yogurt will allow us to generate 375,000 metric tonnes of natural gas which is enough gas to heat both of our hockey arenas year-round."