PWR Blog

 I've really enjoyed watching one of the hottest new shows this season...TVLand's Hot In Cleveland.

The premise has several Los Angeles friends 'of a certain age' deciding to stay permanently in Cleveland after their plane to Paris unexpectedly dumps them there...and they find the local singles scene is both interesting and interested.    Plus, they end up renting a home from Betty White, the live-in caretaker, which really increases the fun -- for us viewers anyway.

What isn't so hot in Cleveland, however, is the millions of dollars being spent to track, and spy, on their citizens' recycling habits...resulting in $100 fines per violation. That's right, Cleveland has been sorting through individuals' trash in order to fine them for throwing away too much material that could have been recycled. And now they're expanding the program from the initial 15,000 citizens to 35,000, with more to follow. 

Now, if you've read any of our other blog postings, you know everyone here at Plasma Waste Recycling passionately believes in recycling, reusing and reducing whenever and where ever possible. But, we also know there's a much better, more efficient, and less intrusive way of recycling Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) than deploying trash 'spy cans' and having the Trash Gestapos rummage through our bins just because we've been on vacation for a few weeks. And a Plasma Waste Recycling Gasification plant also converts the non-recyclable materials into reusable energy, instead of into the ground...at a landfill...possibly near you. 

Could we soon see Betty White's mug shot after she's arrested for not recycling sufficiently?

Want to know more? Cleveland is installing RFID tags in their curb side trash and recycling carts so they can automatically track how often the carts are brought to the curb. If a resident skips a few weeks of recylcing, for instance, a trash supervisor will literally sort through those trash bins to determine if the trash has more than 10% of stuff that is supposed to be recycled. If so, the resident will be fined $100.

"The move is part of a high-tech collection system the city will roll out next year with new trash and recycling carts embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes. 

The chips will allow city workers to monitor how often residents roll carts to the curb for collection. If a chip shows a recyclable cart hasn't been brought to the curb in weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables."

The article goes on to discuss the millions that will be spent to roll this out to all 150,000 citizens. It also mentions other cities that are deploying these trash-spy cans, such as Alexandria, VA. Several cities in England have been using them for years in order to charge residents that exceed their 'trash allotment'.

I suspect Cleveland is really going to heat up as more home owners angrily react to the difficulties of meeting guide lines that are hard to self-measure.

Thank goodness that Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick have moved in. Once the word gets out, they're going to need more people to move to Cleveland because I suspect Lebron James isn't going to be the last person to decide the trash is a lot less stinky in other cities.

Seriously. Recycling is critical. But studies have shown that curb side recycling often misses the mark with way less than half of the transported materials being recycled, often due to mistakes made by the resident.

The answer to this problem isn't likely to be found in more regulations, stiff fines and higher costs in policing the new regulations. Those 'techniques' have been around almost as long as trash and its certain nobody wants more of them (regulations OR trash).

We think the citizens of Cleveland need to promote a Waste-to-Energy Plasma Gasification plant in their area and move on with their lives...free from the Trash Gestapo and free from those unnecessary $100 fines. 

And if you're not currently living in Cleveland, we think it might be a good idea for you to point your friends to this post. Make sure they know there are better ways than Cleveland's method to improving recycling. Get them talking and promoting new approaches that don't rely on landfills or trash police. We all need to start sorting through this now, before 'they' start sorting through our trash.   

 Zero Waste is a movement increasing in popularity. According to Wikipedia, Zero waste is a philosophy that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused. Any trash sent to landfills is minimal.  I think minimal should be changed to "eliminated", but his Wiki definition may consider compost recovering as some type of 'landfill', so I'll give it the benefit of doubt. 

There's even a few organizations promoting this philosophy, such as the Zerowaste.org.

So, I'm reading various industry articles and learn that there is a hotel, and its guests, successfully practicing Zero Waste, eliminating landfill use. We think that is fantastic! Here is an audited example of a business and its customers participating together for the betterment of all. By blending recycling, composting and using Waste-to-Energy methods to recycle previously non-recyclable waste, they prove Zero Waste is an achievable goal.

So, Kudos to Coast Coal Harbour Hotel and its guests! 

The article I read discusses a ZeroWaste program created by a Canadian company called Wasteless Environmental Services, Inc that consults, provides methods and audits their clients to achieve zero waste results and has been receiving numerous accolades for the success of their program, according to this article on Environmental-Expert.com. For those just wanting the basic facts, however, here's a quote from that same article:

The new 220-room Coast Coal Harbour Hotel in downtown Vancouver, is one of only a handful of ZeroWaste hotels in North America. Since implementing the WasteLess ZeroWaste program, the Vancouver hotel has successfully diverted all waste produced at the property (more than 12 tonnes per month) fromending up in landfills. Guests staying at the hotel find not one, but three recycling bins in their rooms: one for recyclables (paper, plastics, glass and metals), one for organics and a bin for non-recyclable products. In addition, 2.79 tons of organic waste generated in the hotel's guest rooms, kitchen and restaurant are recovered every month for composting. The 5.38 tons of non-recyclable waste generated at the hotel every month is picked up and transported to the Greater Vancouver Regional District's Waste-to-Energy facility in south Burnaby where it's used as a fuel source to produce steam that drives a turbine generating 17,297 kilowatt hours of electricity per month -- enough energy to meet the monthly power needs of approximately 18 homes. Other materials such as batteries, paint, electronic equipment, light bulbs, neon tubes, even old wooden pallets are collected on an as-needed basis and recycled. In total, the hotel's zero waste program eliminates approximately 576 cubic feet of waste from going to the landfill space every month and saves 56 trees, 87,978 litres of water and seven barrels of oil on a monthly basis.

I wonder if I can convince my boss that I should personally check out the Coast Coal Harbour Hotel to get a better handle on their customer-centric recycling process? I'm sure I could learn valuable information in about a week's stay...it certainly wouldn't take me more than two weeks even if finding where they hide the three recycling bins in this room takes a day or two: 

Again, excellent job by both Coast Coal Harbour Hotel, their guests and Wasteless Environmental Services, Inc. for showing all of us that Zero Waste isn't just a philosophy. It's a reality. 

Ok, so I saw some friends' pictures that recently went to Gulf Shores Beach. The beach in the pictures looked great, though one friend mentioned it was hard to get a good beach picture without all the rubber gloved clean-up crews ending up in the background.

But, there are some frustrated people living in communities around the Gulf, because Hundreds of Tons of Oil-tainted waste is being dumped in nine 'local' landfills...NON HAZARDOUS Landfills. As you listen to this video report, or read the other article, I'd like you to think about two things:

1) A Plasma Waste Recycling plant could accept and safely gasify this waste into Energy. We have provided information to the AL & LA Governors, BP, the Coast Guard and the ADEM Director. 

2) This waste is being dumped into "non hazardous" waste landfills around the Gulf coast. But...this supposedly non-hazardous waste also includes the shovels, rakes, gloves, boots and other protective clothing, vegetation, and tainted sand along with oil tarballs. These landfills use a liner-based containment method which the EPA has determined will likely fail and water table contamination will occur. So, you have to ask yourself...if its not hazardous, why throw away anything that touched it?

And here's another article that goes into details about five other companies that have also proposed better ways to handle this...non-hazardous...but untouchable waste.

We hope any or several of these solutions are used...just don't let BP ruin our landfills around the Gulf too.

Wait. Did I seriously beg for BP NOT to RUIN a Landfill? Are things that skewed?

If you think they are too, get involved! Communities are making their voice heard and hopefully it will help stop this particular 'crime', because of the visibility. But, let's not stop there. Let's make sure people are still concerned and promoting Green Communities and better approaches to Recycling that reduces any Landfill use. Do we benefit from that promotion? Yes We Do. "We" as in "All of Us"...and...yes...PWR. But, if your community were landfilling less while using less foriegn oil because your Municipal Solid Waste was being converted into renewable energy, would you care who helped make that happen?

 Cows are Hot! Well...at least what they produce is apparently getting hotter every month.

Last month, I blogged about a cow farm using the, um hum, waste in a carbon-reducing, energy creating 'manure farm'. Well, this appears to be a growing trend:

Farm Power, a Skagit County renewable-energy company will break ground on its second anaerobic manure digester -- a renewable electricity-generating facility -- that will server the energy needs of local homes and businesses through Puget Sound Energy's Green Power Program. The diary digester, expected to go online before the end of the year, will product up to 750 kilowatts of energy, or enough electricity to meet the needs of 500 homes.

It appears they already have one of these digestor plants in operation, located near Mount Vernon, Washington, which processes manure from neighboring dairy farms in Skagit County to product up to 750kW of energy.

That's a bunch of Cows. Well, a bunch of Cow Powered Energy, anyway.

Someone mentioned this before one of our meetings soliciting quite a few chuckles. I don't know why we think this dual-use Cow Power cracks us up so much. Seriously, we commend any community using technology that helps all of us reuse, reduce and recycle. I think I mainly like to blog about Cow Power because I can find such great Cow pictures to go with the article. 

But seriously. I think its obvious that we feel bold enough to say,

"Around here, we think powering 500 homes from Cow Waste is no BS."       

Our president and CEO, Terry Moore, opened the  Waste to Energy Finance & Investment Summit Technology Briefing today in San Diego, California. As Chairman, Terry provided the welcome and introduction to both speakers and attendees participating in the pre-summit technical presentations and educational roundtable discussions. And for the last session of the day, Terry participated as Moderator of the Pollution Control Technology Developers panel.

 The Technology Briefing provides insight into the latest offerings spanning the spectrum of our industry and how these technologies contribute to project success. We will be exhibiting through the rest of the Summit, which continues through Thursday. Jesse Miller, chemical engineer, of the US Environmental Protection Agency will provide an update on recent regulatory legislation and insight into issues affecting the industry during a presentation.

After that, we think Terry will go surfing. 

Give him a shout out, if you're in the area. He'll be the guy falling off the board with the really white legs. 

Everyone here at Plasma Waste Recycling understands how complex and confusing 'our world' can appear to most people. Unfortunately, there are even well-intentioned environmentalists that just don't understand the facts...or haven't bothered to really investigate them sufficiently. Grab some coffee and get ready for a bit of a longer read. We'll get back to discussing the fallacies of these "trash-huggers" further down.

We are very excited about a new article just published by MSW Management - The Journal for Municipal Solid Waste Professionals discussing Conversion Technologies, such as ours. It not only discusses our method as a viable solution to eliminate landfills while reducing fossil fuel use, but it debunks many of the hard-core 'zero-waste' fanatics that are entrenched in an unsupportable position of recycling or reusing everything. Everything. No more trash pick-ups. Composting all degradables. Recycling reusables. It's a great nirvana-ish fantasy, but one that has never been proven or even conceived to be successful. Do you have a baby or any friends with babies? Think you can convince them to stop using disposable diapers?

At PWR, our employees love to recycle. We don't throw away our batteries or our cans. And we were taking our glass to a local recycling facility here in our home town...until it was discovered recently that they were actually incinerating it for years, because gas transportation costs made it uneconomical. Yeah. When money gets tight, those things happen. Do you think all your neighbors will reuse, reduce, recycle every single thing? We believe there has to be a balance between doing what is right for our environment, our communities, our day-to-day lives and of course...our pocketbooks (or you guys' wallets).

As an example, California always leads the way in environmental efforts, don't they? As mentioned in the article:

With 10 million residents, Los Angeles County is the most populated in the United States. Although the county recycles 60% of its trash—one of the highest recycling rates in the nation—it still disposes 38,000 tons of trash each day‚ a number expected to increase to nearly 50,000 tons per day by 2020.

So, why our excitement about this article? Here's another quote that provides a glimpse into why we are so passionate about what we are achieving at PWR:

In particular, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) final rule for the renewable fuel standard has for the first time recognized the biogenic portion of the post-recycled MSW stream as qualifying as renewable biomass for the purpose of meeting the federal mandate for the production of biofuels

Wow. Exciting, huh? 

OK...maybe that does need a little deciphering...

This ruling by the EPA has basically given the green light for our technology. It has provided opportunity for various energy bills, such as the Waxman-Markey bill that qualifies the biogenic portion of a Municipality Solid Waste (MSW) stream as a feedstock for renewable electricity and under the renewable portfolio standard.

Which in layman's terms means this process is classified as a renewable energy process that can viably reduce our dependance on fossil fuels -- something everyone understands as critically important.

Kay Martin, vice-president of the BioEnergy Producers Association in California states in this article:

“There are already 100 of these facilities in other countries, so there’s a good track record to show not only that they work but that the emissions from these facilities are excellent,” says Martin. “There are no problems with dioxins or furans and all of them are operating well within the emissions standards of their countries.”

So, we're done. Everyone can go home. The last person out should make sure to turn off the incinerator. 

Well, of course it's never that easy. Some states have more stringent requirements that have to be meet. Some have antiquated laws. What we need now, more than anything, is educating our communities and moving forward.

The article emphasizes this community role:

“Unless it is driven by the community, the big landfill operations have little incentive to change their practice because it is easiest and most profitable for them to just bury waste."

And monitor it for 50 years or more... hmmm...

Another spokesperson also emphasizes this point:

Educating the public is a key factor in promoting the idea that “what these technologies are doing is they’re really transforming two sectors: the waste sector and the transportation fuel sector, by changing the way we use our nonrecyclable garbage in producing a fuel that can at the same time reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Done with that coffee yet? If not...the article is over six long pages and discusses various Waste-to-Energy technologies and companies. There's lots of garbage to go around, so we're more interested in YOUR community picking ONE of them...it doesn't necessarily have to be ours, though we believe you'd be best served by PWR.

Let's just stop landfilling all our trash. Let's recycle what makes sense. Reuse whatever we can.

And GASIFY the rest. 

I just finished reading a timely editorial I found posted here at Investors.com. It discusses how Ethanol subsidiaries has escalated a growing problem in the Gulf of Mexico...which was killing aquatic life long before the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred.

The cause of death wasn't toxic oil, but agricultural run-off into the Mississippi River Basin, which has been on an upward trend as acreage for corn destined to become ethanol increases. Before the first gallon gushed from Deepwater Horizon, there existed an 8,500 square mile "dead zone" below the Mississippi River Delta, roughly the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined.

The article references a study by the National Academy of Sciences that futher reminds us:

"nitrogen leaching from fertilized cornfields in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River system is a primary cause of the bottom-water hypoxia that develops on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico each summer."

It's important not to blindly react, causing far worse damage to our ecology. There will be a group that strongly advocates a halt to all offshore oil drilling...while totally ignoring the ramifications of quick fix symptomatic decisions. We strongly believe a balance of resource use, along with a comprehensive reuse, reduce, recycle approach to all aspects of our community and lives is the best approach.

And any balanced plan, we believe, should include Plasma Gasification for Waste-to-Energy recycling of Municipality Solid Waste (MSW).

I was just sent this interesting article about a China Biogas plant using the manure of 250,000 cows as its power source.  

Yes. 250,000 Cows. Got Gas? Now, Get Stronger Bones while Powering your TV and Coffee Maker.

While this article is great for highlighting another 'alternative renewable energy', it also seems a perfect article to use for answering another frequently asked question about PWR and our renewable waste technology using Plasma Gasification.

Eventually, we always get asked about 'smell'. No, not "Smells like Teen Spirit"? And it's not about "something smells fishy around here". It's often one of the first questions we are asked, if we don't talk about 'the smell'.

It makes sense. Garbage stinks, doesn't it?

We do agree that we wouldn't want to live near one of the open air, constant-compacting, gas-releasing land fills like so many of our citizens must. (Eventually, somebody gets stuck living near that smell.) We're glad our technology helps eliminate that smell.

One of the benefits of re-using Municipal Waste is that we can drive the garbage truck straight into a 'negative air flow' facility where the vast majority of smell is contained, unlike landfills or cow farms. Of course, the garbage must still be transported, just as it already is today. But if we can reduce landfill usage and the subsequent smell, everything might not be "coming up roses", but we should be able to smell more of them. And there should be more room in the world to plant more roses, too. 

So I guess it's clear. At PWR, we actually think it stinks to just throw away a truly renewable energy source. "Smells like Teen Recyclers", anyone?

You'll now be returned to your regularly scheduled...cow story?

As we're enjoying the Memorial Holiday Weekend, here in the deep south, we really appreciate a nice breeze. After the summer humidity sets in, you could probably sell a good breeze for a pretty large chunk of change at almost any outdoor gathering. If the price was right, folks would chip in together and then sit back and really enjoy the gala.  

Ignoring how in the world we'd package and distribute breezes... It naturally makes me wonder how much would it cost to send a nice breeze my way? I mean, it can't be that much, the wind is free, isn't it?

Here at PWR, we believe the world needs to have various alternative energy streams. But we also recognize that these multiple sources of energy streams must be sustainable. Economically, they must pay for themselves or be close enough in cost to existing methods to allow easy adoption. Government subsidized methods are fine for early technology that promises sustainability through lower costs and other improvements, but the eventual stream must exist without financial gifts or it cannot be sustained for long. 

It turns out that 'wind power' may not be as attractive a power source as we've all hoped. 

As discussed in this Wall Street Journal opinion piece, the Cape Wind  Massachusetts project in Nantucket Sound is requesting a 15 year contract to sell their electricity to the local utility company at more than twice the rate consumers pay today. And Cape Wind is also receiving national tax dollars through federal subsidies. Plus, Massachusetts utilities must purchase 15% of their power from renewable sources by 2020 under a 2008 law.

And if price weren't enough of a problem, there's this additional information in the article:

A slew of environmental and political outfits have since filed multiple lawsuits for violations of the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, certain tribal-protection laws, the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act.

I have had request for pictures of the PWR process and plants. I have just uploaded some new images similar to the one below to the Gallery.

Garbage costs. It costs us to collect it. It costs us to bury it. And as landfills around the world continue to fill up, taxpayers may find it costs them more in taxes, too.

The UK government is increasing the cost per ton tax for solid waste by around $11 per ton. While that might not seem like very much, this minor increase will impact taxpayers in just two counties by over $160 million, according to an analysis by the Local Government Association, a watchdog group that monitors impacts to local government by federal government policies. 

“Landfill tax is quite literally costing council taxpayers the earth and this latest rise will only add to the bill. The fear is that householders could ultimately pick up the extra cost. Dumping rubbish in a hole in the ground isn’t just bad for the environment, it threatens to hit the council taxpayer in the pocket unless we cut back.

“It’s more important than ever that people recycle as much as possible. If we don’t reduce landfill, councils and council taxpayers could soon face further EU fines of £150 for every tonne of rubbish that is landfilled above a set amount."

More and more communities are faced with these solid waste issues. We believe community effort AND technology can solve these challenges...technology like our Plasma Arc Gasification which can recycle all of the Municipal Solid Waste currently being landfilled into reusable energy...and REVENUE.