NEWARK, Ohio – Urban dwellers may not like the smell of cow manure emanating from farms nearby, but that unwanted excrement may just be powering the Amazon trucks that deliver packages to their doorsteps.

A pair of Ohio farms are living proof that there is real value from all that cow dung.

“We milk about 2,500 cows each day,” said Evan Barton, owner of South Fork Dairy in Newark. “With that comes about 11 semi loads of manure each day.”

Other than using the waste to fertilize crops, this central Ohio farm has another target for all that manure. Barton now works with a number of other organizations (like Clean Energy Fuels, a natural gas distribution company) to put that manure into an anaerobic digester. The anaerobic digester will harvest the methane that once was escaping into the environment. That methane will be converted into a renewable natural gas.

That gas will then be injected into a pipeline to a new fueling station that provides renewable natural gas. That station will help fuel Amazon trucks and other fleets. Barton’s farm alone will replace diesel from an estimated 50 semi-trailers per year. All said, this means there will be less methane emissions from farms while also displacing fossil fuels.

“We’re in an environment where, politically, cows are getting beat up for methane emissions,” Barton said. “It will benefit my farm, as we dairies have always tried to do what’s sustainable and renewable.”

Another benefit of the digester, Barton said, is that it takes away some of the smell. And, after the methane extraction process, the manure can still be used to apply to the fields for fertilization.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, anaerobic digestion can take manure, food waste or other wastewater biosolids and convert them into biogas or digestate. This can then be used to create electricity, heat, vehicle fuel, organic fertilizer, animal bedding and a number of other products.

“The difference now the digesters are converting the methane and manure into renewable natural gas,” he said.

A fueling station in nearby Groveport, Ohio, is the first construction project completed as part of an agreement between Clean Energy and Amazon. A total of 19 new stations were built as part of the agreement.

Clean Energy Fuels said the Groveport station will dispense 700,000 gallons of renewable natural gas annually instead of diesel, which will reduce carbon emissions by 6,848 metric tons, the equivalent of removing 1,489 passenger cars from the road. Currently, about 52 Amazon trucks can be filled up at the Groveport station overnight.

Roughly 130 miles away in Montpelier, Ohio, rests Bridgewater Dairy Group, which operates dairies in northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana. The farm, founded in 1998, produces five semi-trailers (roughly 30,000 gallons) of milk each day at its three milking facilities.

Mention this dairy and folks in this part of the state often think of the methane digester that the farm installed in 2008 to create energy from cow manure. Bridgewater Dairy Group was the first farm in the state to produce electricity from manure.

A new concept at the time, the digester captures the methane gas from the manure, which is used to power two 600kwh generators. The generators, in turn, produce electricity – enough to power about 400 homes. The energy is sold to Northwestern Ohio Electric Cooperative. To this day it continues to be a viable source of alternative energy.

Chris Weaver, an owner of the dairy, has three priorities at his dairy: people, cows and the environment. And when it comes to the latter, Weaver uses his methane digester to create energy from all the manure on the premise.

“We take the manure from their pens and take it to a concrete cell,” Weaver said. “In that cell, we heat the manure up to 100 degrees and there’s bacteria that grows in that cell. That bacteria eats the manure and releases methane gas.”

In 2005, the Weavers visited dairy farming friends in Indiana who had installed a digester. It piqued their interest, but it wasn’t a cost-effective investment at the time. But with increasing energy costs and with government grants and carbon credits becoming available, they started to think they could break even on the investment.

“We started doing it because we were looking for a way to do things that was better for the environment in terms of our manure management,” Weaver said. “It reduces the odor of manure on the dairy and also creates electricity and provides another area of income that also benefits the environment.”

What’s left of the manure is then stored in lagoons and spread as fertilizer for both the Bridgewater Farms – which grows crops on about 5,000 acres to use as feed for the cows – and for other farmers in the area, he added.

“It’s a great fertilizer product for us and our plants,” Weaver said. “We’re a heavy corn silage user and corn silage uses a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus. We have to buy very little commercial fertilizer.”