When Garbage is Golden

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Cities are beginning to find significant energy sources in their own back yard -- garbage and waste! Turning garbage and waste into energy is turning into a billion dollar business for some enterprising businesses.

Huge amounts of money are spent daily buying energy from foreign nations that have no real respect for our well-being. Permitting America to be dependent on such nations can only lead to complications, especially during times of economic crisis or war....

...Turning garbage into energy calls to mind the 1980s film “Back to the Future,” which inspired whimsical images of future cars powered on waste. Since that time, the technology for turning trash and commercial waste into electricity and biofuel has come a long way. In just the past decade, research and experimentation has brought about a cleaner and more efficient conversion system...... _CSM

Companies such as Waste Management are ideally situated to cash in on this new energy bonanza. Several smart city managers across the US are also catching on to this approach to turning garbage to cold. Cities from Milwaukee to Seattle to Rochester to Gibson City and more, are at various stages of taking control of their own garbage and energy destinies.

Solid wastes can be converted to energy by gasification, pyrolysis, incineration, etc. Wastewater can be used to grow algal energy crops, can be digested to methane, or can be converted to energy via other imaginative methods.

Toxic and hazardous wastes can be safely and completely consumed via certain particularly high temperature gasification and incineration methods. In fact, soon there will be almost no type of waste that cannot be conveniently converted into clean energy and benign by-product.

Some types of long-lived radioactive waste materials are resistant to easy conversion and disposal, but advanced methods are being developed to render even those hazards safe.

The nightmare fears of being drowned under oceans of toxic waste are a partial explanation of why "environmentalists" have been driven to lie about "climate change catastrophe" and other faux end-of-the-world crises. Fears about shortages of energy and resources are further explanations. But as Julian Simon showed in his book "Ultimate Resource", the mental energy wrapped up in all of those fears could be better put to use devising creative solutions to problems.