Hey guys,
I told a slight fib in my last post. The post after this will once again be political.
For this post I want to address a problem that I have really never understood, what should we do with our garbage.
On older movies based out of NY or some northern populated state, I would always see a barge full of garbage going out of the port and I never could figure out where it was going. I just did some research and still could not find a definitive answer of whether it was being dumped into the ocean or if there was a landfill outside the city where it was being taken.
Either way, dumping in the ocean would be terrible and landfills are not much better. The garbage just sits there, doing nothing for us, taking up a ton of space.
SO, how do we address this problem? Efforts to recycle have been underway for a long time and have come a long way. The trash is sorted, removing plastics, metals, and any other items that may be recycled.
Now that its sorted, what do we do with the left overs? Throw it into a landfill for it to sit there and grow?
Well, I recently toured a garbage burning plant. It was pretty neat. They sort the garbage before and after they burn it, removing anything that is recyclable. The heat produced is used to boil water and make electricity. The volume of material is reduced by up to 90%.
According the website below, the waste to energy plants have a smaller carbon footprint than landfills as well. There are pollution control systems, very similiar to the ones employed in coal power plants, to remove the harmful agents such as mercury and fly ash from the flue gas.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/does-burning-garbage-for-electricity-make-sense-1447643515.
This is just food for thought. I found it pretty cool that we can turn our waste into something actually useful, instead of letting it decay in a land fill.
http://www.pinellascounty.org/solidwaste/wte.htm
Hope that was interesting!
The Nuke Cow
Man, I bet the fumes from that place stink. And the job to sort the garbage, jeez. Good article, Mr. Cow. Where was the plant you toured?
ReplyDeleteIt was the Pinellas county plant. The last link I posted is their website. It stunk in the garbage pit where the crane is located, but the site itself did not smell bad. Absolutely nothing like the stink of a landfill.
DeleteThat's really interesting. I never knew this was an option. It could also potentially aide recycling efforts. I'd have to do more individual research but that seems like a way to replace coal and reduce waste. Even if it produces as much waste as a coal plant, it will also eliminate existing waste.
ReplyDeleteI dont think that it would ever replace coal because the efficiency is a little less, garbage is wet, and the scale is a lot smaller. They do recycle everything that can be recycled. Plastics are removed before hand as well as most metals. Any metals that pass through are collected by a giant magnet that passes over the ash.
DeleteThis is something I have never really thought about - but I'm glad to hear that even conventional non-recyclable waste can be "recycled" to generate energy.
ReplyDeleteI always thought that trash burning was bad for the environment, but if it produces a smaller carbon footprint than landfills, this seems like the better option. Are there any down sides to burning trash?
ReplyDeleteIt does produce fumes similar to that of coal plants. But on a much smaller scale, with a smaller energy production scale as well. It kills two birds with one stone though, we would reduce the volume of waste, this does produce ash, and create electricity so the trash isnt wasted.
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