recycling programs

Waste to Energy Program

If America used half its trash as fuel to generate electricity,
it would reduce annual air pollution by approximately
1.4 billion pounds of pollutants.³

Clean, Renewable Energy

Imagine a fuel that's renewable, a source of energy that's cleaner than home heating oil, a source of energy that reduces the buildup of greenhouse gases... and that is endorsed by leading environmental scientists. This fuel is being used right now, in over 120 power plants around the country, most of them built in the past ten years. Last year these power plants made enough energy to light over a million homes and replace 20 supertankers full of oil. Garbage? That's right. Today we have the technology to burn garbage and trash with fewer emissions than the natural gas or heating oil burned in most American homes¹. For greenhouse gas emissions, these "waste-to-energy" plants are more environmentally-friendly than power plants, even those burning natural gas. In fact:

• The National Energy Policy Act of 1992 calls for greater use of trash for energy to help reduce greenhouse gas buildup. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that waste-to-energy technology will be one of the four largest contributors to America's planned carbon dioxide reductions for the year 2000, accounting for 15 percent of the total.²
• The Clean Air Act of 1990 gives credits for reducing pollution to utilities that buy power from waste-to-energy plants.

Garbage?!

When we think of garbage and trash, we usually think of recycling. Recycling helps the environment by recovering materials. But not all trash is worth recycling. At least half our trash is too difficult to recycle without spending huge amounts of money and energy. But we can still get energy out of it and use that energy to replace some of the coal, oil, and natural gas we burn.

Turning Waste into Energy

The modern waste-to-energy plant is a technical marvel. It must burn a fuel that varies from the size of a pea to the size of a tree limb. The fuel can be dry or wet, and it varies greatly in energy content. And modern waste-to-energy plants must burn the trash completely and clean their exhaust with a number of devices to avoid setting off the air pollution alarms that monitor them 24 hours a day. How clean are these plants? When the Commerce waste-to-energy plant near Los Angeles began operating in 1987, its operations created less pollution than the trucks that used to haul the trash to a landfill 16 miles away.⁴ The first step in processing the trash is recycling. Recycling may be done before the trash gets to the plant, or it may be done at the plant. The next step is the furnace itself, where high temperature combustion completely destroys viruses, bacteria, rotting food, and other organic compounds that could potentially harm human health. The heat from the fire boils water and turns it into steam. The steam can be used directly in a heating system or a factory. Usually it is used to turn a turbine-generator to make electricity. After the ash cools, magnets and other mechanical devices pull out metals for recycling. This is an important step, since a waste-to-energy plant can recycle thousands of tons of metals from its ash.⁵

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©From America's Newest Energy Source and Making a Clean Energy Source Cleaner. Call (202) 659-3819 for samples. Volume discounts available for quantities from 100 to 20,000 copies. All material Copyright 1994 by the AIMS Coalition [American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Integrated Waste Services Association (IWSA), Municipal Waste Management Association of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (MWMA), and Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA)].