We could generate 100 times the amount of energy we use now from garbage...

[IndyOp]

Ron Bishop, Solid Waste Engineer. "If we took the theoretical energy potential of the garbage generated in the United States (about 5 pounds per person per day) we could make ALL of the electricity that we make now with coal plants and nuclear plants times 100."

Organic based waste can be turned into methane gas and used as an alternative energy source.

There are over 325 landfill gas-to-energy projects across the United States.

Really cool video at Current TV - http://www.current.tv/network/pods/earth/PD06007

We don't need even one more coal or nuclear plant - we can move quickly to green energy. All we lack is the political will - and political will is a renewable resource - or so I've heard...

[silverojo]

1. K&R!

Pardon the pun, but the potential of garbage has been "wasted" for far too long. This would help solve many of the world's pollution problems.

[IndyOp]

2. Whoa! All time BEST use of an animal in your sig pic! (n/t)

[XemaSab]

7. What IS that???

Whatever it is, I'm :scared:

[4_TN_TITANS]

13. I think it's a Tasmanian devil.... n/t

[NNadir]

3. This reminds me of former Senator Alfonse D'Amato.

When the Joe Margiotta machine ran Nassau County, Long Island with D'Amato's brother, they decided to build a garbage incinerator in the only part of the county that voted Democratic.

Let me guess. You think garbage incinerators are a new idea?

Actually they're not. Burning garbage is the second largest form of non-hydro "renewable" energy there is:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epmxlfile1_1_a.xls

One may argue whether burning garbage is, in fact, "renewable," but frankly to make renewable seem like more than it is, it certainly is necessary to include a certain amount of garbage.

If you imagine that burning garbage is safer than nuclear energy, you're simply being ridiculous.

Air pollution kills constantly. Nuclear energy hasn't killed anyone in years.

[IndyOp]

4. I don't think they are burning the garbage - the snippet from the video

showed the garbage in a huge, huge plastic bag and said that microbes breaking down the organic content released methane. I guessed that it was similar to set ups I've seen to generate energy from cow manure.

I don't think nuclear energy is acceptable, ever, period. No amount of personal ridicule will change that...

[NNadir]

5. You don't think nuclear energy is acceptable?

Wow.

Gee. I didn't know that.

Um, well, that changes everything doesn't it?



The nature of our disagreement reminds me of those bumper stickers that one used to see that read: "God wrote the Bible. I read it. I believe it. And that settles it!!!!"

I lived on Long Island. They burned garbage. They burned landfill gas too, but mostly they burned garbage.

The link I gave you, shows what they get nationally from burning garbage.

Landfill gas has also used on Long Island since the 1960's, most notably around the Glen Cove landfill. In fact, Long Island is filled with landfills, open and closed. Here's a partial list of landfills there: Huntington Township dump, Brookhaven dump, Port Washington dump, Smithtown dump and Islip dump. Famously a garbage barge from Islip traveled all around the Western hemisphere looking for a place to unload when they tried to close the Islip dump. The density of landfills on Long Island is probably higher than any other place on earth, except maybe China and India, and they only got to be landfills when we starting shipping our trash there.

Who knew that we could be the Saudi Arabia of natural garbage gas?

Long Island imports natural gas, and is now, controversially, looking to put a gas terminal at Shoreham. I think they understand garbage on Long Island far better than you do.

No amount of sweeping air pollution under the rug will change, well, the ExternE report.

http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf

Try out figure 10 and then tell me that you want to come here and trash my kids lungs because you have some very lazy ideas.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Methane Power

We narrowly averted a garbage incinerator here in the 80's (through a highly successful recycling program.) I was dead-set against the incinerator, but I don't mind the methane-powered generator now running at the landfill.

Why?

Because the methane (CH₄) is a natural byproduct of the process of decay. It's also a powerful greenhouse gas (much more powerful than CO₂.) So, if they burn it, producing some power, and CO₂ and H₂O instead, I'm all in favor of it.

[Pawel K]

9. Why isn't nuclear energy acceptable?

I guess you children's lungs aren't your concern?

When have we had a serious nuclear disaster in this country? I'll answer for you, never.

[IndyOp]

25. Why isn't nuclear energy acceptable? I have an answer for you...

I don't think the Japanese are any less smart or less careful than us.

Nuke Waste Drums Tipped in Japan Quake

Damaged Japanese nuclear plant 'may sit on fault line' - Guardian

Japan Nuke Plant Leak Worse Than Thought

Japanese nuclear reactor under-designed for earthquake?

[Dogmudgeon]

27. Death Toll: Still 0

The damage was extensive -- and minor. A list was published that purported to "prove" that the damage was "grave". It consisted of details like broken bolts, cracked cement, loose sheet metal, and overturned barrels. We still don't have an estimate of the measured radiation release, but it is still being described as a super-disaster.

The reactor cores and their support systems were undamaged and undisturbed. They were shut down quickly and with no fuss. The system worked the way it was designed to.

There will be investigations. Errors will be corrected. Infractions will be punished. As they should be.

This was not a happy situation. The quake killed at least ten people. But the fear-mongers are working overtime. We don't accept it when Bush and Cheney do it, and we should not accept it in the name of environmentalism, either.

--p!

[Pawel K]

33. And nobody there died, di they? How many people die from pollutated air?

What is wrong with you people?

We have the perfect opportunity to curb global warming here by getting rid of the worst pollutant in our atmosphere but you are too scared because of the bullshit fear mongering that surrounds nuclear power.

[jpak]

18. Really???? - does that include uranium miners and other uranium workers???

nope

Please tell us all about the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and how many claims have been paid to (living) uranium workers...

...and how many former uranium workers will die prematurely from mining and processing U ore for "clean" "safe" nuclear energy...

[Dogmudgeon]

28. You're right. Uranium mining is almost as bad as coal mining.

Comparing uranium-to-coal mining deaths, though, might put your argument back in trouble, but I would like to see both kinds of mining phased out ASAP.

That's why we should extract uranium and thorium from seawater. It is becoming financially feasible. Besides, human life is worth a few extra bucks -- we are seriously planning to use MUCH more expensive forms of power (e.g., solar PV) and call it "green". Getting nuclear material from the sea, we will have enough to replace ALL the coal AND petroleum plants with nuclear reactors in a couple of years.

That way, we can close all the uranium and coal mines. No more deaths from either.

--p!

[jpak]

31. The US would have to process 7000+ cubic kilometers of seawater each year

to extract enough uranium to fuel existing US nuclear power plants.

The annual discharge of the Mississippi River is "only" 535 cubic kilometers per year.

Seawater uranium extraction is *not* becoming physically, energetically or financially feasible.

It's charlatan nonsense...

[Pawel K]

34. But why are you making this pointless argument?

Coal mining is just as bad if not worse. So you might still have some bad mining going on but you eliminated vitually all the pollution associated with this.

Honestly, what they hell is people's problem with nuclear energy? This is the perfect solution to our problem yet I find it amazing that so many here, who are supposed to be enviromentally friendly, do not believe in nuclear energy. Yet I haven't heard one rational argument as to why we shouldn't be replacing coal with nuclear.

Is the coal industry handing out money to members around here? Where can I sign up? I could use some extra cash.

[razzleberry]

8. US coal use, daily, per capita, electricity. 20 pounds

this story is BS

[frogcycle]

10. there are many, many technological advances

possible, that big oil has been successfully suppressing. Some of these may "oversell" their possibilities.

There is not any one single answer. But a mindset-change to seek creative solutions instead of just mindlessly seeking more oil, as is now documented in the information from cheney's so-called "energy policy meetings" could and would result in a cleaner, safer, sustainable environment.


We have to stop the "it can't work because" knee-jerk response to everything. These technologies, plus solar, and wind, and tidal, and geothermal, and possibly in some cases nuclear can collectively replace fossil fuel combustion for energy generation. But not if we don't pull our heads out of the tar sands and start looking toward the future.

The thing that is so infuriating is that all these possible advances will take time, and the fossil fuel industries will continue to make obscene profits for a long time to come, even if we pull out all the stops to pursue aggressively every one of these and more. And yet they just want to dig in their heels and say "no way - never - nohow"

And the bush/cheney cabal supports that position 100%. They would actually PREFER to go down in history as the biggest, baddest world-dominating tyrants ever, eclipsing Attila the Hun, and Ghengis Khan, and Hitler, and Alexander, and all the others, as the guys who finally pulled it off and owned the world.

Then they'll sit back and pump oil and continue to destroy the planet, and thousands or millions of years from now visitors will find this rock and discover vestiges of former intelligent life, like we find on Easter Island, where they cut down all the trees to move those statues, destroyed the ecology, and either died out or left


http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2003/Anything-Into-Oil1may03.htm

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070403_chicken_feathers.html

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/kids/animals/story1/story1.htm

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html

[IndyOp]

11. Frogcycle - Beautifully stated! I think the video overstates the potential

of garbage, and I think that CONG (Coal - Oil - Nuclear - Gas) vastly underestimate the combination of wind, solar, methane from garbage and manure, and other sources.

I really liked the video because I had never heard anything about garbage generating electricity before - how many other sources do most of us have no clue about because CONG controls the information.

[frogcycle]

23. did you read my first link?

here's some update on depolymerization:


http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/eco/zwaste2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2004-01-22-kantor_x.htm

http://www.catalyticdepolymerization.org/

this one describes odor problems they are dealing with, but verifies the pilot plant was actually operating in 2004:

http://www.energybulletin.net/1666.html

and of course it is criticized by the Heartland Institute (which also calls Al Gore an alarmist preaching 'junk science' - so clearly they must be on to something!)

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=1968

here is their website:

http://www.changingworldtech.com/press_room/index.asp


That this technology is so marginalized - by the cheney cabal making a now-publicly-documented decision to ignore any alternatives to crude oil and coal as energy sources, and to take aggressive action to obtain more supplies (euphemism for invade Iraq)
is criminal beyond description. This company has soldiered on, working their magic in Carthage, Mo., proving there are other ways to skin the cat, while bushco has done everything it can to keep them hidden. Shut them down over odors - anybody ever driven by a feedlot in Texas or Oklahoma? Or a pig farm in Iowa?

Publish smear articles written by the Exxon-and-GM-funded and staffed "Heartland Institute."

And meanwhile kill thousands of Iraqis, destroy our country's standing in the world, and fatten the purses of cronies.

[glitch]

32. Or an oil refinery? "shut them down over odors" they are a bad joke. nt

[Heywood J]

35. Hmmm...

Analysts note this is not the first time “green” energy proposals have failed to deliver on utopian promises.

Tom Tanton, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, said, “One cannot make one thing out of anything; and by that I mean they want to make oil, but they want to make it out of everything.

“The universe has been separated into materials and elements for good reason. I’m not sure exactly what those good reasons are, but turning it all back into one thing (i.e., petroleum) just seems counter to the first and second laws of thermodynamics,” Tanton said.

So, we should never try to make oil that does not come from Saudi Arabia, I guess. With answers like that, I know I'm convinced. Next time, this guy should at least try not to sound like quite so much of a tool.

[glitch]

12. K & R thanks for posting.

This could have the added advantage of giving local communities control of energy rather than international corporations.

[IndyOp]

15. Exactly! Anything we can do to decentralize energy production will help -

Right now one of our biggest wastes is "line loss" the loss of energy as it travels from the power plant to our homes. If we had solar panels on many, many homes; a source of energy from the county dump; and a wind or solar farm - we can supply our energy needs without coal or nuclear.

[glitch]

30. You get it. IMO decentraliziation is the threat, and why these techs get so much pushback. nt

[Gregorian]

14. Mountain View, CA has been doing it for thirty years.

I've been in their facility back in 1980 or so. I was very surprised to see that by using an epdm liner and some pipes, they could run two huge diesel engines full time.

Actually it's not surprising at all. But what I do find most surprising about it all is the realization of just how much energy this crazy country wants to use.

As usual, I must add my comments. We could totally stop terrorism by simply using less energy. Done. End of subject. Someone give me a billion dollars for my advice. :)

For example, I am now going to turn on my 1000 Watt espresso machine, and pull an espresso. See? A kilowatt for a cup.

[NickB79]

16. But we use electricity and oil to PRODUCE garbage

Just looking in my trash can, there's a lot of plastic and paper in there. The banana peel looking up at me didn't require much fossil fuel to grow, but it did need a substantial amount to transport it up here to Minnesota from the Caribbean.

Garbage isn't an energy source because we use up more energy to manufacture the products that then become that garbage :banghead:

[IndyOp]

17. The garbage that produces methane is organic - food waste -

so long as we keep eating we'll have lots of that kind of garbage. And, we need to drastically decrease the plastic and paper, indeed.

:hi:

[NickB79]

19. And we use massive amounts of fossil fuels on farms

My dad is a farmer. He burns well over 1000 gallons of gasoline and diesel a year in tractors and farm vehicles working the fields of our 100 acre family farm. Then there is the fuel used to ship that food an average of 1500 miles before it reaches someone's plate, not to mention the energy used in processing and packaging of that food.

I've always found this link interesting: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html

"In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994). Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer

19% for the operation of field machinery

16% for transportation

13% for irrigation

08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)

05% for crop drying

05% for pesticide production

08% miscellaneous"

[IndyOp]

20. Agreed - We need to work on this - go organic, grow & buy locally -

Using the organic waste in our garbage is, in an important way, "honoring" whatever energy is put into growing the food.

I think your statement isn't meant as an objection to harvesting energy from organic waste, but is meant to add to the conversation - I hope. We can come up with objections to every type of energy source - that doesn't mean that we should stop in our tracks and go with coal and oil.

[NickB79]

21. Sorry, I sometimes come across as unduly argumentative

I would definitely support more sustainable farming, and burning the waste gases from landfills is a good use for an otherwise wasted energy source. It still releases CO2, but that's better than the methane currently released and unburned.

[IndyOp]

22. No problem at all. Glad to have you chime in! :-) (n/t)

[frogcycle]

24. and also

the CO2 released is carbon recently-removed from the atmosphere rather than that which has been sequestered for millions of years. so it is not a net-increase to the quantity in circulation.

[frogcycle]

26. take a good look at the links I posted above on depolymerization

more than just organic garbage can be scavenged

we now use fossil fuel to manufacture/transport damned near everything.

and we will never be able to go to a 100%-recycled energy model. We will always need input based on E=MC^^2, or on gravity. Simple physics.

It can come from the nuclear reactions in our sun, or from terrestrial reactors.
Or it can be from tidal forces (gravitation) or geothermal (latent heat from accretion of the planet due to gravity).

That pretty much covers it.

The fossil fuels are all the result of solar energy used via photosynthesis to combine carbon hydrogen, and oxygen into carbohydrates, then converted under pressure and heat (gravity) to hydrocarbon. This process sequesters carbon, is how the planet evolved its oxygen-rich atmosphere that makes it habitable to us.

If we reduce the rapid reversal of that sequestration and tap into the energy sources more directly, we can possibly achieve a sustainable balance. If we don't, we won't. Period.

People can argue all they want about how long it will take, how fast the planet will become uninhabitable, how fast the seas will rise, blah blah blah. If the "tipping point" is within ten years, then it is super urgent. If not, then it is still very urgent.

If we can develop sequestration techniques that put back the carbon we dig/pump from the ground after burning it to release energy, then that can be a sustainable cycle. If not, then we have to find other means eventually. It is not a matter of how long the oil will last - it won't last forever, so alternatives will be needed some day. We can put off coming up with them until we destroy ourselves or until the oil runs out, whichever comes first. Or we can bite the bullet and make our inhabiting the earth part of a sustainable cycle, and enjoy a cleaner, pleasanter environment.

The overriding guideline is similar to the line about going into the backwoods; "leave only footprints"

Whatever we do in the course of inhabiting this planet MUST be sustainable.

Energy and raw materials are available to use in modifying local environments - ie, heating/cooling, shelter, manufacturing and transporting stuff, producing and processing food, etc.

The big engine comprised of the sun, earth, and moon will be cranking along until the sun grows old and dies, swallowing the earth in the process. We can find a way to still be around as a species those many millions of years in the future, with an urgent need to find another solar system, or we can commit suicide as a species. And if we are in fact happy with the latter prospect, then does it really matter whether it is 100 generations from now, or five, or two, or right now?

And if right now is not palatable as a time to end it, then why is right now not a good time to start preventing the end?

[jberryhill]

29. Does that mean that we only generate 1% of our garbage....

...from the energy we currently use.

That doesn't seem right on its face.