Andy Logan and Seth Terry, began doing some brainstorming on how they could use their training at the School of Mines to solve the problem. According to 9news, they created a company called 'Oberon FMR'. The FMR stands for 'fish meal replacement'.
"It was just back-of-an-envelope brainstorming. What we've done is come up with a way to make a high protein fish meal using sludge that comes from breweries," Logan told 9news.
Breweries have long faced a problem in properly disposing of waste materials that come from brewing hops and barley. Much like a sewage plant, breweries have to have large settling ponds to treat the sludge.
"Large brewers spend 200 dollars a ton to dispose of this material. We can get that material for free, and using a new bacterial process, we can process 18,000 tons a year of fish food. Nothing like that has ever been done before," Logan said.
"A large facility, a large brewery for example, might put 40 to 50,000 pounds of waste beer down their drain every day. So we can convert that to 30 to 35,000 pounds of bacterial protein everyday. Regular fish meal has 40 percent protein. Ours has 65 percent protein."
Drinking Like a Fish: An Unlikely Feed Source
US - An unlikely alliance between two former Colorado School of Mines students and the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins could someday end up saving fisheries all over the world.
