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Page added on June 8, 2014
Talkin’ trash: Are we literally throwing away energy?
Philipp Schmidt-Pathmann wakes up every day thinking about trash. What got him thinking about it in the first place is how much of it is simply dumped into landfills across America when most of what is not recyclable could instead be turned into energy for homes and businesses everywhere.
Schmidt-Pathmann has seen a better approach in his native Germany where only about 1 percent of all municipal waste goes into landfills. This compares with about 68 percent in the United States of the 400 million tons discarded annually, he explains. (Exact numbers are hard to come by, but he prefers figures collected by Biocycle Magazine.) Germans recycle almost 70 percent of their municipal waste and burn almost all the rest to turn it into energy.
Schmidt-Pathmann is founder and executive director of the Zero Landfill Initiative based in Seattle. He says that the United States could add 12 gigawatts (billions of watts) of electricity generation by expanding waste-to-energy facilities even if the country upped its percentage of recycling to that of Germany’s. The United States currently recycles about 25 percent of its waste. Burning all the landfill waste currently available would provide an extra 33 gigawatts. That would be the equivalent of 33 large electricity generating plants.
But, Schmidt-Pathmann thinks he knows why there is so much resistance to the German model in the United States.
First, Americans still believe that burning waste is a dirty business, giving off toxic fumes and plumes of smoke. But modern waste-to-energy facilities produce little in the way of air pollution using up-to-date technology to reduce emissions to a minimum. High-temperature burning breaks apart the bonds of toxic chemicals.
Schmidt-Pathmann says that we should think about the advances in waste-to-energy plants over the last thirty years in the same way we think about advances in computers from the first floppy disk operated ones in the early 1980s to the supercomputers of today.
Second, landfills used to be controlled mostly by municipalities. Now the vast majority of them in the United States are owned by private waste haulers who in turn haul 80 percent of the municipal waste in the country. It’s currently cheaper for those haulers to dump the waste remaining after recycling into their landfills than to burn or recycle more carefully what’s left.
In Germany it became government policy to reduce landfill disposal and therefore the government made it very expensive to use landfills. There is so far no such policy in America. In addition, there is far more land in America for creating landfills than in Germany making it cheaper to build them.
Third, Americans somehow believe that waste-to-energy facilities will result in less recycling. But a recent survey demonstrated that communities with waste-to-energy facilities actually recycle slightly MORE material than those without. This may be due to the fact that such communities tend to be leaders in waste handling and so have well-established recycling programs.
Moreover, waste-to-energy facilities recycle large amounts of metal that remain after the waste is burned. One company, Covanta, operating across the United States recovers the equivalent of five to six Golden Gate bridges of metals each year from the ash that remains after combustion.
Still, what’s so bad about putting trash in a landfill? Here’s what’s bad about it according to Schmidt-Pathmann. Even though landfills produce methane that can be gathered and used to power generating plants, a portion of that methane–a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide–still leaks into the atmosphere. Beside this, much more energy with fewer greenhouse gas emissions could be produced from the buried trash if it were instead burned.
Also, it turns out that private landfill operators are only responsible for their landfills for 30 years after closing. After that, society at large becomes responsible for the care and monitoring of those landfills which will remain hazardous for thousands of years. When these costs are added to the costs of landfilling, it becomes obvious why burning what can’t be recycled makes economic as well as environmental health sense. And, it makes all the more clear why Pathmann believes that zero landfill should be our goal.
How could waste-to-energy and near zero landfill become the norm in America? It will only happen when landfilling becomes more expensive than the alternatives or when government forces it to happen.
Currently, Schmidt-Pathmann explains, the private waste haulers in the United States are politically powerful and quite understandably don’t want their huge investment in landfills and the surrounding waste transportation infrastructure to become worthless. One way change could occur is if waste haulers were somehow reimbursed over time for what would become their stranded landfill assets in a manner similar to the way utilities are reimbursed through rate hikes for the mothballing of generating plants that become useless for regulatory or economic reasons.
Higher waste disposal rates would certainly be unpopular, but they could lead to a much safer future with cleaner energy and more recycling. Despite the higher cost, this might turn out to be a better course than containing and cleaning up ever expanding landfills indefinitely or hoping in vain that private waste haulers will voluntarily abandon their costly landfill infrastructure without compensation in favor of what’s best for society.
There is one other possibility. Municipalities typically have waste hauling franchise agreements with private haulers that allow them access to residents. Those contracts often permit municipalities to divert waste to better uses such as recycling and energy production so long as at least some waste continues to go to landfills according the Schmidt-Pathmann. Whether municipalities have the will to go down this road–essentially starving the haulers of trash for their landfills–seems doubtful. The politically connected haulers will be unlikely to stand still as their businesses shrink for lack of trash.
Right now the United States produces 1 million football fields of trash 6 feet deep each year. We’d like to think that once we throw something away, we don’t have to think about it anymore. But, unless we start doing things differently in the United States, we’ll actually end up having to think about our trash for a very, very long time to come.
14 Comments on "Talkin’ trash: Are we literally throwing away energy?"
Norm on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 4:35 pm
It is absolutely true, what this article says. The fat lazy Americans are addicted to throwing the garbage into the ravine.
They are incapable of recycling a pop can. Their big belly and the low I.Q. gets in the way. Also, Jesus said in the Bible, recycle-eth the popeth can, and thou shalt be damned for eternity.
However for the rest of us who are equipped with the optional brain, just recycle-sort ahead of the burning, use the high-tech incinerator to burn the waste, then use magnet-machines to get the steel out of the ash. Free electricity too.
There should also be large amounts of jobs sorting the trash in a tolerable facility designed for the purpose. so that when big fat USA lazy dumb-dumb throws his HFCS-pop-can into the trash, then somebody else gets to pull it out, at a facility.
However since the USA is the global embarassment, and we do not want to offer any jobs to people who would sort the trash, then we will just keep tossing all the garbage into the ravine.
BTW I recycle very intensively, and nobody else I know does this. Also people who understand that I do this find it very objectionable. I recycle approx 1 ton of steel per year, random finds at the edge of the roadways.
rockman on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 4:56 pm
I would be more impressed with Philipp’s proposal if, instead of drawing a paycheck from donations to a nom-profit, he got a loan and invested his money doing what he says others could do profitably.
And IMHO the vast majority of Americans don’t care about pollution from landfills, who owns them now or in 30 years or anything else other than seeing their garbage picked up on schedule. If someone can make a profit by investing tens of $millions in the process I’m sure most municipalities would be glad to give them all the garbage they want for free.
There’s no theoretical plan that doesn’t look good when you’re risking someone else’s money.
I fucked davey's mom on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 8:18 pm
A garbage nation, filled with trash and dog feces like davey whoremoan.
The reckoning day is coming.
Shaved Monkey on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 9:18 pm
Quite an interesting show on Australian TV farming show yesterday.
All about composting waste and returning it to farms,it included composted green waste,sewage,humanure,and even oils pills on sandy beaches.
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2014/s4020946.htm
Kenz300 on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 9:52 pm
Second generation biofuels can be produced from waste or trash. All landfills can be converted to produce energy, biofuels and recycled raw materials for new products.
This is more sustainable and less hazardous than burying the trash and waiting for it to contaminate the ground water.
Reduce, reuse and recycle………….
toolpush on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 9:56 pm
I know this is not the ideal solution, but even the company “Waste Management” WM, is doing something about the methane that is produced at the landfills and turning it into diesel. WM is also running many of their trucks on landfill gas as well.
So some of the energy trapped in the waste stream is being put to good use.
I am sure they are not doing this just to be good corporate citizens, so their must be money in it.
http://www.velocys.com/financial/nr/nr140324.php
Makati1 on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 11:29 pm
Here in the Philippines, most trash is truly things not usable any other way. Bottles, plastic or glass, are recycled. Printer ink cartridges are recycled. Office paper, newspaper, etc are recycled. Clot and clothes are recycled in to something usable. Metals never get to the land fill. Nor do appliances. They all get recycled/repaired until they cannot be then the parts are salvaged.
This is how the West should be. But we prefer to build mountains of consumer junk and cover it with grass and trees. Some of it still works but is last years model. Out of sight, out of mind.
Hey! The trash pickup was early today and I didn’t get my 4 cans out in time! Damn! ^_^
Northwest Resident on Mon, 9th Jun 2014 12:22 am
Converting landfill waste to energy is a good idea, but it will never even come close to providing enough energy for us. The only reason we have so much waste to begin with is because we are burning excessive amounts of oil to create it. When oil goes into rapid decline, so will the size of the landfills. We might get one good energy conversion out of all the waste we’ve built up so far, maybe, but it is a one-shot deal. No oil = no mountains of waste = no landfills.
J-Gav on Mon, 9th Jun 2014 6:14 am
The waste-management problem will only get bigger – and more expensive to deal with responsibly. Re-using cooking oils, composting, etc are all good things but in a much lower FF-energy future, there will also be less trash to burn. So scaling this sort of plan up to large industrial infrastructure levels doesn’t look like a very good idea to me.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 9th Jun 2014 6:17 am
“I F**ked Davy’s mom”, Well I feel complimented that I was able to upset a”smuk”. I imagine IFDM is a sock puppet from Noob, Cluester, and or Mak. These sort of things mean I have struck my mark. I have succeeded. Thanks for the promo.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 9th Jun 2014 6:21 am
Yea, Mak, in the P’s you keep your slum dwellers busy picking through the Landfills. That is a great and wholesome activity for young people and makes for great documentaries. I look at the land fill mountains in the US as future mines in a collapsed BAU. There is allot of useful items in a US landfill that will be salvaged post BAU.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 9th Jun 2014 6:34 am
As BAU collapses and becomes more dysfunctional we will see waste management issues recede and accelerate. This is the nature of chaos in a system which is randomness and dysfunction. In some ways the volume will decease because we are going to see the end of globalized consumerism. We are going to see the end of discretionary products that really have no use other than filling up landfills. China is by far the largest supplier of useless consumer goods. We are going to see the end of industrialized food system so all the packaging and food waste will quickly evaporate. The problem is going to come with the responsible management of those waste that are really dangerous and expensive to deal with. Municipal sewer systems will be problematic as they fail for want of spare parts or an unstable grid connection. The most worrisome is the NUK waste and the industrial waste laying around waiting for management. When BAU collapses industry will collapse as we know it. The volumes of waste will decease but the store of waste will not. The most worrisome part of a collapsing BAU to me is waste management of the really bad stuff.
Northwest Resident on Mon, 9th Jun 2014 10:35 am
Hey Davy — Whoever that sad and pathetic excuse for a human being is that did the f’ing post, one thing we know for sure, and that is, you are making that ugly cretin’s life a little more miserable than it already is. Way to go!
Davey on Mon, 9th Jun 2014 11:34 am
Thanks n/r, guy must have been pissed to drag mom into it.