While settin today and kinda "talkin" to my Lord Jesus, it came upon my mind that I needed to share something with ya'll. We've had control of this old world for many years and seems in the last 50 years probably more damages have been done to it than all the centures before. I kinda think the most damaging of all the things is maybe our garbage disposal systems. Whoever thought up the landfill must have been out to lunch when brains were passed out. I don't mean to be overly critical or rude but even this old countryboy understands that the water table, amongst other things, has been destroyed with bacterial and harmful chemicals from all the "stuff" that's been dumped and buried over the years. I think it has been more devestating than open dumps where garbage was burned. This great country needs to get some common sense about itself and do something about the overwhelming mountain of garbage that's choking us to death! Why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not build power plants that could burn garbage [combustiable refuse] and recycle all the rest. I know this isn't new technology as I think a recycling center was built in the 70's in Ohio somewhere. We could get rid of the unwanted and unneeded garbage and generate electical power in the process. What do ya'll think? Is the old hillbilly way off base or do you think it can be done? Do you think it's too late for America to clean up after itself? We have "spoiled" our own living room and kitchens with garbage for years and are now reaping the "benefits" of that lax and inconsiderated mindset. Just the thoughts from old hoot ----! Thank you Lord for another year to be with family and friends. May your Light shine throughout the entire world. hoot. Matt. 24:44

-- hoot (hoot@pcinetwork.com), December 24, 2000

Answers

Hoot,

I wish we could get everyone into a combination recycling and organic disposal. imagine if every house and apartment had a self contained vermicompost system with the recycle unit. Paper, plastic and cardboard in its bins, foodstuf in its bin, once a month a truckload of recyclables and dirt going out to run around again and a small bin of "real trash " to be contended with. Even when living in apartments, I never threw out more than one sack of trash every 2 weeks. Everything else was recycled. I even composted in my wifes houseplants (thinking back to those plants now while working my vermicompost bins makes me LOL).

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), December 24, 2000.

I think that the main problem with these types of plants is that most of the trash that we as a nation produce is loaded with chemicals that are toxic when burned and each chemical has its own method of "scrubbing" from the resultant exhaust and therefore is has been cost prohibitive to scrub for all of the different pollutants and still produce electicity at a reasonable price. However, maybe with new technology it is an attempt that should be reconsidered. We've got to do something! Here's a radical thought - go back to glass jars and cardboard (unglazed) boxes. The former I can easily recycle and the latter I can compost!

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), December 24, 2000.

Amen Hoot. God Bless you. Maybe in this energy hungry world our garbage will look more appealing as other sources run out???

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), December 24, 2000.

Hoot:

I am certainly not an engineer, but... I doubt it would be very cost efficient to try to generate electricity from burning trash. You would have to generate steam first, which would then power turbines to produce the electricity (same basic concept as a nuclear power plant on a ship or submarine). At each stage energy is lost.

The City of Nashville does have a plant near downtown which produces steam, which services many of the downtown buildings for heating and air conditioning (on the latter, I have no idea how). There are now discussions about its future. It is having trouble getting enough trash to burn as private haulers may have their own landfill or a cheaper place to dump elsewhere. The plant is looking at millions of dollars in improvements required to meet EPA requirements. Plus, a lot of people think it is an absolute eyesore. Plus, it generates a lot of ash for which there is no use and it ends up in a landfill.

I believe all landfills developed within the past twenty or so years are required to be water-tight. However, when this happens almost no decomposition occurs in the trash buried.

There is talk about some day mining landfills for the resources therein.

Old joke: What does Disney World do with its trash? They bury it in Tommorow Land and let a future generation worry about it.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 24, 2000.

Reuse is probably a better usage of "trash". The item about chemicals that have to be scrubbed out of the flue gases is somewhat correct, heavy metals are more of a problem and combustion byproducts. The main problem with using trash as a fuel is the temperatures modern steam power plants operate at. Generally a steam boiler for a large power plant operates at 1000 degrees F. To get this kind of combustion temperatures, coal is powdered as fine as talcum powder and blown into the combustion chamber. There are some low level boilers that use waste material, but the volume of trash currently is much too great. Of course, you have to start somewhere. A tax supported power generation system that is primarily to burn trash and secondarily produce power might be feasible, but since the utility industry has been deregulated costs become a major problem. I believe some cities have pilot programs in this area using small boilers, but do not know how they are doing.

-- JLS in NW AZ (stalkingbull007@AOL.com), December 24, 2000.

I don't know about the technical stuff, but as far as recycling goes, they don't make it easy in North Vernon, In. I go there once every week or so, but recycle is only opened Wed-Sat from 8-5 or something like that. I think I'm the only person I know that does recycles. I do know a couple homesteaders that make compost. A couple years ago I took a large kitchen trash bag with me for my walk. In a half a mile, the bag was full. Breaks my heart to see people throw things out like that, and it's really disgusting to see dirty papmers laying around in a parking lot.

Soni, you're right about going back to glass jars, an excellent idea. Have you ever noticed how things taste better in glass. And drinks in long neck bottles taste better because there's less air. We don't have a deposit on bottles or cans here, too bad.

Plastic leaches stuff into food and drinks. The thinner the plastic, the more the leaching.

Hoot, thanks for caring enough to post this.

-- Cindy (atilrthehony_1@yahoo.com), December 24, 2000.

Here in NY state a process was found that would pulverize old tires and mix it with coal to be used in generating stations but the necessary permits could not be obtained. The scrubbers that are used at the generating stations would have removed 99.9% of the pollutants from the exhauste. It seems the proper gears in the political machine were not greased. The mountains of tires continues to sadly grow. An eyesore to be sure.

-- Gerald S. Rozanski (Grozanski56@cs.com), December 24, 2000.

I was in charge of two different prototype projects that turn waste into energy. One was a commercial sized waste tire gassifier that converted waste tires into a combustible fuel gas. The other was a project that upgraded the methane/CO2 gasses from a landfill into pipeline quality gas. 600thousand cubic feet of methane/day into gas indistinguishable from pipeline gas. Quite cool!

A related thot---Hoot, you talk about how alot of this "damage" has occurred in the last fifty years or so. Just think, about two hundred years back or so there was no industry to speak of per se. Then we discovered steam, electricity, mass production and gasoline. We build machines than can do the work of many people within the same time span. Lets just say, globally we have enuf machinery to "leverage" the "productivity" activity by 5 times. Multiply that effect by 6 billion and we 6 billion have the impact of 30 billion people. This kinda relates to the population issues appearing here lately.

-- john leake (natlivent@pcpros.net), December 24, 2000.

I'll tell ya what I think would go a long way to fix the garbage problem is by stopping cities and counties from shipping off all the stuff to other places! If a county makes so much garbage they should have to take care of it right where they live. No more out of sight out of mind. Then you would see a fast change!!!...Kirk

-- Kirk davis (kirkay@yahoo.com), December 25, 2000.

Hoot:

Something indirectly related to dumping. Saw an article in the paper where Russia wants to become the dumping ground (storage) of spent nuclear fuel from around the world. They expect to make $20 billion out of it. Measure has pass the lower house and stands a good chance of passing the upper one also, with Presidental signigure. With their track record, this is a bit scary.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 25, 2000.

Hoot, I also share your concerns about landfills, waste and the need for more recycling...

One thing that really bothers me around here is how they will tear buildings down and then BURN all the wood and whatever...

Last year they had a special grant in the small town near here and they would tear down old or abandoned houses, etc. There were several that had good wood in them and lots of stuff to be salvaged...But they wouldn't let anybody could and get any of the good stuff saying the "liability" was too high....so they just bulldozed it, hauled it to dump trucks, and then burned it near the high school!!! I was SICK!!!

We ALL need to learn to quit being so wasteful. We are a "disposable" society....We throw things away and buy new ones when the older things are still good....or could be used for something else.

At least with home canning we are using the same jars over and over again!!! That helps a little!

If we would all just do a little every day it would make a difference.

Even these large landfills with the "proper" liners and all that eventually leech chemicals and stuff into the earth....I've covered a lot about that kind of thing writing for the newspapers....it's scarey, frightening and I think basically SINFUL for us to abuse what God has given us this way!

-- Suzy in 'Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), December 25, 2000.

Hoot:

This post has got me to thinking. I make an effort to recycle, but still take about a plastic garbage bag full of household trash a month to the drop-off point.

The county has an active recycling effort for aluminum, plastic, tin cans and newspapers/magazines (depending on the market price). It doesn't accept glass for recycling. What I do is to break up the glass in a 5-gallon bucket with a mawl and pore it into feed bags. At least this reduces space at the landfill. Scrap metal is picked up at the drop-off point and recycled.

That still leaves household trash. Since I had a bag about full, I took it into the garbage and emptied it on a table. I found it was mostly personal correspondence and plastic wrapping, such as bread wrappers and the sleeves the paper comes in every day. In the future, envelopes and contents are going into that day's paper (including cutting out the plastic address window. Soft plastic is going to be stuffed into a gallon plastic jug until it is full, then put in with the recycle bag. Styrofoam (such as meat trays) will be broken up and used when I ship something as cushioning.

I suspect with a little more dedication on my part I can get a plastic bag a month down to the equivalent of a paper grocery bag a month.

Amusing to see the pickups today going by with Christmas boxes and wrapping on the way to the drop-off point. For wrapping gift packages I mostly use the Sunday funnies.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 27, 2000.