WASTE TO ENERGY
“ONE (WO)MAN’S TRASH IS ANOTHER (WO)MAN’S…ENERGY.”
— Unknown
THE PROBLEM
There are three key problems associated with landfills:
1. Toxins: Countless materials that enter landfills contain harmful, toxic substances. Burying these toxins pave the way for their reappearance in our soil and groundwater, becoming massive environmental hazards that require huge remediation efforts.
2. Leachate: When water filters through a landfill, the residual liquids – leachate – that have broken down from waste materials are extremely toxic and can easily and quickly drain into surrounding ground water and water ways.
3. Greenhouse Gas: When organic material (food scraps and green waste) is compacted and buried at a landfill, the oxygen is removed from the material, causing it to break down in an anaerobic process. Eventually this releases the very potent (25x more so than CO2) greenhouse gas —methane.
Photo: Aerial View Maui Landfill Fire - “Compost Fire” Due to High Levels of Greenwaste & Resulting Methane Gas - Hawai’i News Now
LANDFILLS
A LANDFILL’S FOOTPRINT
According to multiple experts, including the US Energy Information Administration, landfills are the second most polluting industry in the country. Only the energy industry, broadly defined as both coal and oil and gas extraction and burning, exceed landfills' catastrophic emission of GHGs.
MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE V. VEHICLE EMISSIONS
Landfills in this country regularly and dependably emit more pollutants than all transportation in the United States. In fact Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in United States sends twice as much GHGs into our atmosphere as all of the gas engine vehicles operating in our nation.
The landfill problem is uniformly local. Every community disposes its waste in a nearby landfill that constantly sends Carbon Dioxide and Methane into the air. In Maui, for example, more than 500 tons of air polluting waste is dumped daily into the Maui County landfill. And the polluting effect, by way of comparison, is equivalent to 7,500 gas engine vehicles driving across the island. The landfill problem is urgent and in need of immediate correction.
Photo: Central Maui Landfill, Pu’unene - Maui Now
CURRENT ALTERNATIVES
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE
Reduction and recycling are essential components in seeking alternatives to landfills. Communities throughout America have made and continue to make valiant efforts to throw away less and to repurpose what remains. Experience shows us, however, that from our pre-historic origins to the present humans have discarded waste which could not be reduced or repurposed. We will inevitably produce some portion of waste that we will dump in the ground.
One of the limitations to the recycle everything approach is the substantial energy required to convert discarded waste into usable products. The energy cost manifests both economically and environmentally. The EPA estimates that we in the United States recycle at a rate of 32%. A doubling of our rate of recycling would still result in 400 tons of waste dumped in the Maui Central Landfill. We should not surrender the dream of a Zero-waste culture. We should use all the tools available.
INCINERATION
From pre-historic humans to the present the only alternative to dumping waste has been burning it. As soon as we discovered fire we incinerated our waste. That archaic remedy stays with us. Incineration is crudely basic, inefficient and obviously polluting. The internal cost of inefficiency and the external cost of pollution haunts trash incineration everywhere that it's used.
Not surprisingly people in general and the environmental movement in particular have not focused on eliminating landfills or incineration. Without the availability of an antidote to the disease we have accepted, to a large extent, living with the problem. Despite the bold visions of climate solutions nobody proposes the closure of landfills or incinerators even incrementally. The naturally arising question is: And replace them with what exactly?
“THE PATH TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SOURCES WILL BE LONG AND SOMETIMES DIFFICULT. BUT AMERICA CANNOT RESIST THIS TRANSITION, WE MUST LEAD IT…THAT’S HOW WE WILL MAINTAIN OUR ECONOMIC VITALITY AND OUR NATIONAL TREASURE — OUR FORESTS AND WATERWAYS, OUR CROP LANDS AND SNOW-CAPPED PEAKS. THAT IS HOW WE WILL PRESERVE OUR PLANET…THAT’S WHAT WILL LEND MEANING TO THE CREED OUR FATHERS ONCE DECLARED.”
- Barack Obama, In Second Inaugural Address (21 Jan 2013) at the United States Capitol
SOLUTION
There exist solutions to this massive problem that not only answer the question of what to do with the waste we as humans create, but also how to take care of it sustainably and create useful byproducts.