Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Turn Waste into Energy

Looking through any issue of science, technology, or business magazine or just searching news articles online will yield many stories about how the businesses that first embraced using low waste and more energy efficient business practices are realizing greater savings in money than they expected. This leads you to believe that if cutting energy saves so much money, making energy from garbage would provide just as much savings in money. Actually this is what many of the largest, most successful garbage collection agencies have already started.

A landfill is sealed to prevent any contamination. The decomposing garbage produces methane, because it is sealed away from the air, which must be vented. This methane is what makes the landfill stink as well as pollute the air. For this reason some landfills even go so far as to flare the methane, which is just burning it off.

Waste Management and Allied Waste Industries (two of the leading publicly traded municipal waste management companies) are burning this methane to power a generators. While it is debated whether it is actually 'renewable' or not and about the value of recycling instead, the point is that we already made this garbage, it has to be disposed of somewhere, and it will break down into methane regardless of anything we do.

The obvious way to maximize our gain from this situation is to use the gas to generate electricity. A larger supply of electricity will prevent energy prices from rising, so it makes sense for the individual. (Yes, I know the amount of electricity generated is negligible compared to a coal fired power plant, but this is essentially free energy, that is already being delivered to a centralized location and if all landfills across the world harvested energy this way it would make a large impact).

If you are at all serious about getting your local government to make a difference when it comes to our energy supply, contact your local government. The costs are reasonable for municipalities when they take advantage of federal and state incentives. This is something that can make an immediate impact on your community as well as being a piece of the big picture, (because let's face it, there's not much any one of us can do on the national scale besides voting for politicians who rarely do what we actually want them to do).

Please make your voice heard. More information found here