A TOWN’S food waste could be used to power its electricity as a former banker “recycles his bonus” to do his bit for the environment.

Jeremy Elden, who knows a thing or two about finances having worked at the now defunct investment bank Lehman Brothers, is putting together plans to build an £8million power plant to fuel parts of Halstead.

Mr Elden, 51, who lives in Nayland, says the plant will use the process of anaerobic digestion to break down food waste and turn it into biogass.

This would fuel an engine that turns a generator, thereby creating enough electricity, he believes, to supply 40 per cent of Halstead’s domestic needs.

Mr Elden, director of Glendale Power, plans to build the plant on the Bluebridge Industrial Estate.

He said: “During the day, the industrial estate will gobble up the electricity. When the industrial estate is quiet, the electricity will go to homes in Halstead.

“The project could have a bigger impact on climate change than if all of Halstead’s residents gave up car use entirely.

“There would be less need to build pylons across the countryside because there would be less need to transport electricity.”

He added: “It’s a new business. My previous career was as an investment banker covering the energy sector.

“I retired in 2005 from Lehman Brothers.

“With this business, I’m putting my accumulated skills and capital to work in a different fashion.

“I’m recycling my bonuses.” Mr Elden will be submitting a planning application later this year and, if successful, hopes the plant would be up and running by early 2011.

He will be investing about £1million of his own money in the plant with cash also coming from a venture capital fund.

The technique the plant would be using is a long-established pro-cess used in Germany, where there are more than 3,000 plants.

There are a small number of these plants across the country, although none, as yet, in Essex.