Scientists have been looking for solutions to the food waste problem, and now researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, think they've hit upon a possible fix. They say that by making use of a pair of simple chemical processes — hydrothermal liquefaction and anaerobic digestion — we could turn food waste into environmentally friendly biofuel.

The point is to “turn food waste into a valuable resource,” Roy Posmanik, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell and lead author of a recent paper about the research, told NBC News MACH in an email.

Hydrothermal liquefaction involves heating food waste under high pressure — essentially pressure-cooking it — to create an oil that can be refined into fuel.