As far as I am concerned, the two biggest problems facing humanity are kicking our addiction to oil, and figuring out a way to get rid of all our garbage without stuffing it into big, endless holes in the ground.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could kill two birds with one stone? One day, we might be able to, but for now at least one company is working on a way to fix their fuel woes within the confines of their own business.
Waste Management, one of the biggest garbage companies in the country, says it will be able to produce 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) daily from just one landfill in Northern California.
Industry juggernaut Waste Management is convinced there’s a future in sewage-to-biofuel, and to prove it the company has just joined with the largest refiner in the U.S., Valero Energy Corp., to blend wastewater “crude” into gasoline. The two companies have invested in Terrabon LLC, which was formed in the 1990’s to commercialize three technologies including a biofuel process called MixAlco. With a half-billion people (and counting) contributing to the feedstock in the U.S. alone, it looks like sewage could be the answer to the search for a truly sustainable biofuel.
I bought a pack of gum a few months ago. I paid with a credit card. I signed my paper receipt, was handed my duplicate paper copy of the transaction, expressed my gratitude for the exchange and walked outside. I unwrapped the plastic packaging surrounding the paper box containing the aforementioned gum. I opened the lid, unwrapped the tin foil around the packets of individually wrapped goodness. Then I carefully selected my piece, unwrapped it and set to chewing. As I chewed, I looked at the green gum package blankly when something caught my eye. In between the main paper packaging, the secondary foil packaging, and the shelves that held the remaining individually wrapped pieces, there was a small picture. It was a picture of a stick figure throwing the accumulated ball of waste into a garbage pail, with words underneath that read “Do your Part.”
“Do my part”, I repeated. I chomped my gum a few more times, chewing on my orders. It seemed simple enough. I am not great with directions, but I felt that I could handle that. The picture made it look easy. I was just to throw away the ball of accumulated spent packaging, which was made up of trees that took years to grow, plastics derived from petroleum, and aluminum extracted with great effort all with the sole purpose of being wrapped around something destined to be unwrapped, thrown away, and reburied in a hole or better yet, burned to make room for more people to “do their part.”
A “green economy” can be built in China in less than 20 years, argues a new McKinsey report. The new study, “China’s Green Revolution“, offers the most comprehensive quantitative analysis to date of China’s abatement cost curve.
Previous studies of a similar ilk, like the Stern Review, have incorporated social benefits to partially offset the cost of scaling up energy efficient and clean technologies. In contrast, the latest McKinsey report considers only technology-related costs and attaches a figure to the cost of green initiatives in China.
So what is the final damage? While costs are negative for upgrades in some industries, like buildings, due to the savings generated from energy efficiency improvements, a total 1.5-2 trillion yuan (USD 220-295 billion) would have to be spent every year until 2030 in order to reach McKinsey’s alternative scenario.
Waste Management of Seattle has begun construction on a new compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station and unveiled a fleet of CNG-fueled solid waste collection trucks. The Seattle project is part of a larger national effort to cut the company’s CO2 emissions by 15% by 2020.
Waste Management is investing $29 million in 106 new vehicles and an additional $7.5 million to build a compressed natural gas fueling station in Seattle. When complete, the station will open to the public and within five years all 180 collection trucks in the Seattle fleet will be fueled by CNG.
Nationally, Waste Management already has 265 CNG and has 418 LNG (liquified natural gas) vehicles; and by the end of 2009, the company expects to have 500 LNG vehicles and 299 CNG vehicles in service.
The town of Lowell, Ind., is examining whether or not to build a $ 200 million plant that would convert garbage into ethanol.
Though such a plant might conjure up visions of the “Mr. Fusion” unit in Doc Brown’s DeLorean, the plants could create 165 permanent jobs and 400 construction jobs in the small town southwest of Gary.
Eighty percent of corporate sustainability executives in the Fortune 500 plan to maintain or increase their budgets in 2009 - despite today’s down market, according to a new survey.
As we discussed in this piece on How To Cut Your Costs And Make Your Package Greener, cost saving efforts often have the unintended or sometimes intended impact of making your product and processes more eco friendly. As more and more companies discover this salient fact, the scales will tip from just incidental greening of product to full scale efforts to promote sustainability WHILE cutting costs.
Notorious for producing the greenhouse gas, methane, and then having to flare it off to avoid the potential danger of explosions, landfills are now converting this gas to electricity that can be fed to the grid.
This September, the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, known as DADS,brought its waste-to-energy capabilities online, powering four V-16 Caterpillar engines that generate and sell electricity to utilities company, Xcel Energy.
Researchers at Michigan State University are working on technology that could help small farms transform animal waste from pollutant to fuel. Through funding from both public and anonymous, private sources, MSU is planning an Anaerobic Digestion Research and Education Center. The Center will test methods for efficiently using bacteria to turn animal waste into biogas, which farms can in turn use in place of fossil fuels for things like electricity and heat. The aim is to make this an affordable option for small- to mid-sized farms. This technology simultaneously addresses two issues that farmers face: farm waste management and increased energy prices.
As far as I am concerned, the two biggest problems facing humanity are kicking our addiction to oil, and figuring out a way to get rid of all our garbage without stuffing it into big, endless holes in the ground.
