# Garbage trashes solar



## Seasoned Oak (May 2, 2014)

Garbage may not be as glamorous as solar but it sure is making strides in the alternative energy field.
Waste management see it as a fuel source ,not as a waste product. Advancements in clean gassification of garbage as well as methane recovery from landfills are just 2 of the ways it can become a fuel source and an electric supplier.
It just has yet to catch on with investors.
http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2014/05/02/solar-energy-overpowered-by-smelly-trash/


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## begreen (May 2, 2014)

I am pushing our county to consider landfill alternatives, but not from methane collection. Methane is much worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It is often better to get all biodegradables out of the trash and then burn the remainder, cleanly. Portland has a Covanta plant generating 11MW out of landfill material.
http://sustainablebusinessoregon.co...anta-amps-waste-to-energy-efforts.html?page=2
http://www.covanta.com/facilities/facility-by-location/marion.aspx


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## bmblank (May 2, 2014)

If methane is worse than co2 then why let it just release into the atmosphere? Collect it and burn it, then that methane is converted to water and co2? (Disclaimer, I haven't done the conversions to know exactly what is created when burning methane. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, just playing devils advocate.)


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## Laszlo (May 3, 2014)

bmblank said:


> If methane is worse than co2 then why let it just release into the atmosphere? Collect it and burn it, then that methane is converted to water and co2?


Yes, after methane combustion the product is CO2 and water: CH4 + 2 O2 → CO2 + 2 H2O
Even after accounting for the much longer time carbon dioxide stays suspended in the atmosphere, methane is still a far more potent greenhouse gas (33x worse over a 100-yr timeframe). Anything we can do to mitigate the release of more methane (including burning it) is good in my book.


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## Circus (May 3, 2014)

Manure biodigesters are becoming common in Wisconsin (Renew Wisconsin). Balking utilities seem to be the biggest hurtle.


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## blades (May 3, 2014)

Might have this a bit twisted , WE Energies built a bio eletrical generation plant Northern Wi, at tax and customers expense, effectively bankrupting the town where located due to infrastructure up grades -energy generated all shipped out of state. Wind farm project again at expense of taxpayer and customers - energy generated shipped out of state, yet my bill includes charges for them buying power from out of state- go figure Going back a few years Wastemanagement designed installed and operated methane electrical generation from their land fills by law excess production is supposed to be purchased by WE or any other electrical suppler on that grid- WE refused saying the power generated wasn't clean enough or some such rot - they were also consultants on the project. ( warning do not plug an oscilloscope in on an ac line from WE - you will not like what will show up)


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## woodgeek (May 3, 2014)

Interesting. Can't argue with the numbers...  kWh(Garbage) > kWh(Solar).    But starting this year, that will never be true again.

The bit about stock prices is bogus.....they're based on future earnings and potential...garbage has hard limits on its potential as an energy source.


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## woodgeek (May 3, 2014)

Laszlo said:


> Even after accounting for the much longer time carbon dioxide stays suspended in the atmosphere, methane is still a far more potent greenhouse gas (33x worse over a 100-yr timeframe). Anything we can do to mitigate the release of more methane (including burning it) is good in my book.



I don't really care for these '33x' numbers myself, and prefer to think of them as comparing (bad) apples and (worse) oranges.  The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is ~20 years....so while it is very potent, we live with our own mistakes....the methane we emit heats the world we live in, and is gone in our 3 score and ten.  The CO2 we emit will still be warming the earth and acidifying the ocean when our grandchildren's grandchildren are making their way in the world, literally a curse to the 7th generation.

All that said, reducing non-CO2 greenhouse gases is the real easy/cheap low hanging fruit that can do a lot to mitigate the next few decades of warming.  Something like 30-40% of current human-derived warming is non-CO2....methane, nitrogen oxides and fluorocarbons.


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## mustash29 (May 9, 2014)

For the last 14.5 years, every 12 hr shift at work I burn about 250 tons of garbage.

Nobody wants trash piled at the end of their driveway.  Nobody wants a landfill in thier back yard.  Nobody wants an incinerator there either.  My comments to that remind me of something my father used to tell us as kids....."want" in one hand and "sh!t" in the other and see which one fills up first.

Just like everything else, technology takes time to "learn from it's mistakes", but just think.....if we had been properly recycling everything we could and burning the rest since day one, how different would things be today?

You can drill and tap a landfill and recover the landfill gas from decomposing trash, but that still leaves a huge amount of value buried there.  I forsee a day when we will actually mine landfills so that we can recycle more items, and burn the rest as fuel.

A mountain of garbage is not a nice thing to to look at (or smell) as compared to a neatly stacked cord of dry wood, but they are two in the same.  Both are a source of value, heat, buried "treasure", etc.


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## begreen (May 10, 2014)

This is not an either or situation. In order to get off the fossil fuel habit we will need to have multiple power sources. Solar and trash burning are two of them. Turning waste into bio-char and incinerating the remains for power makes sense, especially when we are putting 500 trillion tons of trash into landfills a year. Use the waste heat from the power stations to warm greenhouses and start producing more food locally to reduce transportation fuel consumption.


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## Seasoned Oak (May 10, 2014)

Everyone hates carbon taxes ,but they do encourage the use of non carbon producing alternatives. Oil is still too cheap which is what make the business case for transporting food thousands of miles from source to table. This should be addressed thru some sort of tariffs or taxes. Buy and use local needs encouragement or financial inducement to succeed.


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## splitoak (May 15, 2014)

Taxed
Enough
Alreday!


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## Grisu (May 15, 2014)

splitoak said:


> Taxed
> Enough
> Alreday!



Taxes could/should be made revenue neutral while discouraging resource use and encouraging other goals like increased employment. Germany enacted an "EcoTax"-reform late 90ies by levying higher taxes on fossil fuels like oil and reducing labor costs by reducing retirement contributions. Here is an overview: http://www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Po...scal Policies/Ecological Tax Reform Loske.pdf
Although not perfect, the reform has largely been a success. Denmark had similar reforms a few years earlier with similar positive effects.


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## Grisu (May 15, 2014)

Seasoned Oak said:


> Garbage may not be as glamorous as solar but it sure is making strides in the alternative energy field.
> Waste management see it as a fuel source ,not as a waste product. Advancements in clean gassification of garbage as well as methane recovery from landfills are just 2 of the ways it can become a fuel source and an electric supplier.
> It just has yet to catch on with investors.
> http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2014/05/02/solar-energy-overpowered-by-smelly-trash/



While I see burning garbage for electricity generation as better than throwing it into landfill, you need to be careful not do overdo it. In Europe several countries built a lot of trash power plants and are now clamoring for "fuel" as efforts to reduce and recycle trash are very successful. They now ship trash sometimes hundreds of miles to underutilized power plants. Building garbage power plants, unfortunately, collides with the ultimate goal of completely eliminating non-recyclable trash generation, which will be required to become sustainable.


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## woodgeek (May 15, 2014)

Grisu said:


> While I see burning garbage for electricity generation as better than throwing it into landfill, you need to be careful not do overdo it. In Europe several countries built a lot of trash power plants and are now clamoring for "fuel" as efforts to reduce and recycle trash are very successful. They now ship trash sometimes hundreds of miles to underutilized power plants. Building garbage power plants, unfortunately, collides with the ultimate goal of completely eliminating non-recyclable trash generation, which will be required to become sustainable.



You make good points....but I think it is unlikely, even in a fully sustainable ecotopic future, that all materials will be readily 'recyclable'.  For example, we could have biomass-derived plastics of many different formulations, often in very complex forms, e.g. textiles, construction goods, multi-layer film packaging, consumer goods, etc.  Combustion of such things is the recycling method of last resort (e.g. requiring less net energy than any other method). If biomass derived, burning such products IS sustainable and does constitute recycling.


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## Seasoned Oak (May 15, 2014)

Grisu said:


> They now ship trash sometimes hundreds of miles to underutilized power plants. Building garbage power plants, unfortunately, collides with the ultimate goal of completely eliminating non-recyclable trash generation, which will be required to become sustainable.


Not very well thought out if they dont generate the required fuel locally. Even if an item is recyclable it dont always get recycled. We have free pickup of recyclable materials around her but most people dont put anything out. They would rather pay to throw it all together and have it hauled away.
Human nature i guess. Not too many people give a hoot about the environment beyond their neighborhood at least around here. A deposit on recyclable materials is probably the only thing that will get action.


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## Seasoned Oak (May 15, 2014)

splitoak said:


> Taxed
> Enough
> Alreday!


I prefer tariffs. You dont have to pay these if you dont import. It encourages domestic production.


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## Cynnergy (May 21, 2014)

BC has a revenue-neutral carbon tax too.  I've mentioned this in other posts.  I like it!

The EU was responsible for changing attitudes to recycling in Britain massively in a very short period of time - in the 5 years I lived there (2006-2011) we went from having to take our recycling to designated communal bins at the city pool, to household collections of all kinds of recyclables, including food waste.  How did they do it?  The EU taxed all items going into landfill and increased the taxes every year.  Suddenly it made sense for local governments to improve collections and make difficult decisions to keep stuff out of landfill _because it saved them money._  Lots of 'energy-from-waste' plants (incinerators) were built too.

All of the goodwill and education programs out there can only do so much.  People are lazy.  Money talks.


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## begreen (May 21, 2014)

Very interesting Cynnergy. We are starting up a Zero Waste program in our community. Our landfill is over capacity. I'd like to learn more about this. Can you point me to some linked sources in Britain on the topic?


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## Cynnergy (May 22, 2014)

Hi BG,

I haven't found a lot, but this article basically sums it up: http://www.letsrecycle.com/business/landfill-tax

Wikipedia has a few other examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_tax

A brief media release about waste in the EU in general and the 50% recycling rate by 2020: http://www.eea.europa.eu/media/newsreleases/highest-recycling-rates-in-austria

I think the key to the landfill tax success in the UK was that it really took the decision-making away from local government.  As undemocratic as that sounds, I think in some cases it's necessary for these big environmental issues that have a small effect at the local scale but a large cumulative effect.  There was a lot of public backlash at switching to alternating weeks of recycling/waste pickup (massively overblown complaints about maggots, etc) and more at the 'gross-ness' of the food waste scheme introduction.  But it did work - our local council went from recycling under 20% of its waste to over 50% in 5 years.  

Maybe it would work at a community scale in Washington though - your residents are probably a bit more enlightened!


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## begreen (May 22, 2014)

Good info, thanks!


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## Grisu (May 22, 2014)

Here is a summary of German waste management efforts: http://www.bmub.bund.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Pools/Broschueren/abfallwirtschaft_2013_en_bf.pdf
Plus, the 'Green Dot' program to reduce packaging waste: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)


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## begreen (May 23, 2014)

Good read, glad it's in English , thanks.


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