Bagasse, a waste product from sugar cane and sorghum production, is now used to make ethanol fuel, disposable tableware, paper, building materials, acoustic tiles, and animal feed. Brazil and India are the top producers of bagasse, with Brazil able to supply 12% of its electricity needs from it. Bagasse is also considered an environmentally friendly replacement for polystyrene food packaging. However, workers exposed to bagasse dust in paper mills may develop pulmonary fibrosis.
Bagasse is an organic waste product produced during the pressing of sugar cane to extract sugar and the extraction of juice from sorghum which is used to make alcoholic beverages. Though originally considered to be of no commercial value, it is now used as a source of cellulose to make ethanol fuel, molded into disposable tableware, and is used for papermaking in nations with climates that have few trees, such as in the Middle East. Using bagasse in this way is considered beneficial to the environment and represents a significant reduction in the waste stream. Workers exposed to bagasse dust in paper mills, however, often developed a chronic lung condition known as pulmonary fibrosis.
Another name for bagasse is megass, from a root term that originally meant garbage. Instead of creating air pollution by burning it, however, new uses for it continue to flourish. It has become the essential ingredient in pressed building materials used in construction, in the production of acoustic tiles and as a source of fiber in animal feed.
Brazil has the world’s largest economy for the production of bagasse from sugar cane, closely followed by India. It was estimated in 2004 that Brazil could supply nearly 12% of its electricity needs by using it to generate alcohol-based fuels such as ethanol or by directly burning the waste in pellet form. The Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association (UNICA) noted that in 2011 the harvest was expected to be about 595.89 million tons, an increase of 10% from the previous year.
A large portion of sugar cane is converted into bagasse, as it is the fibrous content of the plant itself. An estimated 30% of sugar cane is recovered as bagasse. Normally this residue was disposed of but is now seen as a valuable natural resource. The top sugarcane-producing countries that are using it in bioenergy fuel production, papermaking and packaging are Brazil, India and China, as well as Pakistan and Cuba, which account for more than half of combined global production. It is estimated that Cuba, in 2004 alone, was able to produce over 25% of its electricity needs from bagasse.
Some of the bagasse produced in the sugar mills is burned in the same mills as a source of fuel. As of 2010, only about 5% to 10% of paper production worldwide was sourced from agricultural crop waste material such as bagasse instead of trees. The fiber has several uses, however, and is considered to be of equal quality to the fiber produced in soda pulp, with the tree’s wood as the raw ingredient. The short, pith fibers that are removed from the sugarcane process are the best and are sold for a variety of paper uses, including making tissue paper, stationery, and newsprint. The fiber is also seen as an environmentally friendly replacement for polystyrene food container packaging, and has been shown to biodegrade in compost in one to four months, unlike plastic-based packaging, which can sit in landfills for centuries.
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