Recycling Barbecue

The sun dipped low over the reclaimed fields. The sky was awash in hues of orange and purple. A gentle breeze carried the scents of sunflowers just beginning to bloom. Andriy, with a weathered smile, surveyed his handiwork before the cookout.

The heart of his kitchen wasn't the sleek solar oven or the hydroponic herb garden lining the windowsill. Rather, the true marvel resided in an unassuming corner of the room, where an enriched compost bin hummed softly. This wasn't a traditional decomposing pile of kitchen scraps; this was a bioreactor carefully cultivating a strain of methylococcus capsulatus, a remarkable bacterium with an insatiable appetite for waste and a talent for producing single-cell protein.