Enhancing the value of waste

[Brian Ellis]

During my recent trip to Switzerland, I had the privilege of visiting one of the most modern and efficient plants for generating electricity and thermal energy from household garbage and other organic waste. This enhancement of the value of what is otherwise dumped into landfills can make a significant and economically profitable contribution to reducing fossil fuel carbon emissions, almost anywhere in the world. You can see an essay I wrote about this visit.

On returning home, I thought I would see whether this technology could be applied here and an initial mini-study, largely from published data, showed that there is a strong probability that it could, in trumps. I've published a second essay suggesting this implementation.

[High_Jumbllama]

What about the Carbon Dioxide and other chemicals released by burning the garbage? That has to go somewhere. This is not as simple as no CO2 from fossil fuels.

[Brian Ellis]

1. The CO2 comes mostly from household garbage: lettuce leaves, coffee grounds, bones, peach stones, whatever. These are renewable vegetable energy.

2. The second source is from soiled paper, unsuitable for recycling, or unable to be recycled. This is also renewable vegetable energy.

3. The third source is from used plastics which have already filled their primary function.

4. All the above is a form of recycling: however, it is not recycling from, e.g., paper back to paper but paper back to energy.

5. The alternative is landfilling, where large amounts of methane, much worse than carbon dioxide, would be released, as well as carbon dioxide, having achieved nothing in the process except nourishing rats, filling up valuable land space, emanating noisome smells etc.

6. In any case, a large proportion of the CO2 would be captured by the limewater in the scrubber and converted to lumps of insoluble calcium carbonate which is mixed with the clinker. It is therefore partially sequestered.

7. If you read the article and links, you will see there are virtually no other chemicals released: they are all captured, bar minuscule amounts of no importance, well under all regulatory levels.

Actually, you should know all this, because Baltimore has a large waste enhancing power station, albeit of much older design and possibly (I don't know for sure) less well protected against emitting nasties.

Next question?

[Tjalfe]

Can you convince the city of Toronto to actually do something like this, instead of trucking it 3-4 hours to Michigan, or, starting next year ( I think) a big new dump near London Ontario.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes...PLEASE tell Toronto there is another way to handle their waste instead of it being buried at the edge land within 1/2 mile of our family farms

[Elie]

It's not the Canadians, it's the Americans that allowed the Canadians to dump thier trash in Michigan.

I hope that changes though, waste disposal is starting to become an issue world wide, and I mean all sort of waste not just garbage.

[Dr Mordrid]

It's not the Canadians, it's the Americans that allowed the Canadians to dump thier trash in Michigan.

Another real-world example of Flip Wilson's old line "THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT!!"

[Brian Ellis]

Can you convince the city of Toronto to actually do something like this, instead of trucking it 3-4 hours to Michigan, or, starting next year ( I think) a big new dump near London Ontario.

If you want Toronto to do it, then tell their authorities that the money they spend trucking it is being wasted and, instead, they can use is a monetary resource, not to mention all the CO2 and other pollution being emitted by the trucks. It's a long time since I was there (attended a UN meeting in Burlington in 1994 on the forensic use of solvents in fingerprinting, forgery detection and crime scene analyses etc, hosted by the RCMP), but I seem to remember it was a hefty distance. How much do Toronto pay for the privilege of dumping their waste in MI? I am sure that it would be 1000% more profitable for them to enhance the value of their garbage.

Can you discuss this with the media to sensitise the people and the authorities?