Over the years, we have heard of using all sorts of materials as potential fuel sources: discarded cooking oil, algae, urine and zoo manure, and even the human bottom. But here’s a new one: discarded ice cream. (Wait, I hear you say, there is such a thing as discarded ice cream? Well, not in this house, but, yes...) Hello, Cleveland:

By August, an anaerobic digester in the Cleveland neighborhood has a generating capacity of 1.3 million watts. And leftover ice cream, scraped from the pipes at the Pierre's Ice Cream Co.'s headquarters plant in Midtown, is one of its many fuels.

This super-sized mechanical gut uses the same bacteria found in animal intestines to turn food waste into methane. That gas runs a large, clean-burning biogas engine that spins a generator, pumping power into the grid.

It’s part of a larger “waste-to-energy” program

born of an unlikely union between Quasar Energy Group and Forest City Enterprises Inc., a publicly traded real estate developer with $10.5 billion in assets across the country. The Northeast Ohio companies see the business potential of turning organic waste, including the byproducts of food production, beverage bottling and brewing, into a commodity that can produce power, heat and fertilizer for farmers' fields. "If it's organic, we can process it," said Mel Kurtz, Quasar's president. "And we can process it for less than the traditional means."

It’s still no chunky monkey compared to general energy needs, but if it can be scaled it could offer a reliable source of renewable energy.