Global Warming - A Thing of the Past

There are a lot of concerns with global warming these days. The concept of global warming gets very complex. Politics plays a role, and whenever that happens emotions often take over from knowledge and intelligence. I do not claim to be an expert in how and why climates change. My expertise is in reducing harmful chemicals in the air, soil, and water. In the United States alone two million tons of methane emissions are generated annually by our landfills. Of course, there are many other harmful chemicals being emitted from our landfills, but using methane alone, kind of ads a perspective to the problem. Methane, of course, is a significant green house gas designated by experts as being partially responsible for global warming. So there is a big problem with the way we manage our wastes in the United States. The problem is much worse on a global scale. But there are good and reasonable solutions.

One day landfills will be a thing of the past. There are several technologies that will combust debris, and reduce the amount of trash that needs to buried by 90 percent or greater. In the United States we use the oldest method of all and that is called mass burn. However, significant research is being conducted in this country, as well as in places were a lot of landfill space is not available. Emerging technologies include pyrolysis, gasification, and plasma arc to name a few. It is not too important to describe these in detail, but suffice it to say that these are not burning technologies they are transformational. They transform organic material into gas, and inorganic material to a molten glob, with a little bit of char remaining. The char and the inorganic materials can be reused. The gases are separated out. The bad gases are destroyed or filtered, the good gases are used to power boilers to create electricity.

Of course, these new technologies are relatively expensive. But as the concern for global warming becomes greater, and the technological world looks for ways to shield us from a warmer climate, reducing waste by greater than 90 percent and producing electricity from our waste seems to be a pretty good way to proceed. After all, in using these technologies we will not only significantly reduce greenhouse gases resulting from garbage, but we will produce electricity that currently takes non-renewable resources that are said to add to the problem of climate change. We can accomplish this all with garbage. Isn’t that something?