Synagro’s Commitment to the Environment
In helping more than 1,000 customers manage their biosolids, Synagro’s 1,000 passionate environmentalists create enormous benefit for the world.
We take sustainability seriously.
We work with our customers to ensure biosolids are recycled, removing biosolids from landfills, enhancing the soil, and protecting our waterways.
Our Position as North America’s Leading Manager of Biosolids Continues
With the addition of new facilities currently under construction, we will manage almost 17 million tons of biosolids annually by 2022. Every ton of biosolids diverted from landfills and taken to beneficial use (BU) reduces greenhouse gas emissions and their negative effects on our climate. Our BU offerings include composting, drying and pelletization, incineration and land application. We do everything in our power to find beneficial use solutions for the biosolids we manage, and by 2022 will take more than 86% of biosolids we manage to beneficial use.
Synagro’s unique mix of biosolids facilities and services provides our municipal partners with meaningful environmental benefit.
Benefits
Our Commitment to New York City's Biosolids Program
Synagro is proud to serve New York City, and appreciate their leadership in the biosolids space. We applaud their commitment to take 100% of their biosolids to beneficial use by 2030, and are partnering with them to achieve that goal much sooner. In the next 18 months, we will commission facilities capable of taking 50% of their biosolids to beneficial use. Moving to beneficial use will reduce production of greenhouse gasses as well as sequester carbon, all while replenishing the Earth’s valuable organic matter.
Keeping Our Waterways Safe
Each year, Synagro’s wastewater and residuals processing removes approximately 39,000,000 pounds of nitrogen and 22,500,000 pounds of phosphorous from our waterways and diverts them to farmland.
These nutrients are unhealthy for our water, but they are healthy for our farmland, and contribute to sustainable agriculture practices.
Reducing Methane, Preserving Air Quality
Synagro’s Honolulu, Hawaii biosolids facility includes both anaerobic digestion and thermal drying of the community’s biosolids. The biogas produced from our digestion process is a renewable fuel source and displaces the need for more than 16,500 gallons of fuel oil annually, the equivalent to removing 350 automobiles from the roadways each year.
Using Renewable Energy to Replace Fossil Fuels
Our biosolids dryers in North Andover, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Pinellas County, Florida operate using digester gas as a fuel component.This reduces our natural gas consumption by 500,000 gallons per year.
Recycling Waste Gas, Preserving Air Quality
When we commission our state-of-the-art facility in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, we will use methane-rich biogas from our anaerobic digesters to provide heat to the thermal drying process. This will decrease the need for flaring the biogas into the atmosphere, or using more than 1,000,000 gallons of propane annually, representing a greenhouse gas offset of up to 44,000 tons CO2 equivalents annually.
Using Biosolids as an Alternative to Fossil Fuels
When our partners at Lehigh Cement Union Bridge complete the refurbishment of their biosolids handling facility, they will accept thermally dried product from our Baltimore, Maryland facility as a supplemental fuel, reducing their fossil fuel consumption by up to 20,000 tons of coal annually.
Carbon Sequestration
Our annual application of biosolids compost to agricultural land sequesters 180,000 tons of CO2 equivalents and land application of dried biosolids sequesters a further 22,500 tons of CO2 equivalents. This equates to taking 44,000 average cars off of the road.
Reducing Truck Traffic and Helping the Environment
From 2016 to 2019, Synagro moved more than 1.3M tons of biosolids for our municipal partners with our highly efficient EPIC rail assets.
Using this method instead of over the road trucks, avoided the creation of more than 62,000 tons of CO2 equivalents – a pollution savings equivalent to removing more than 11,000 cars from public roadways.