World's First Large-Scale Waste-to-Biofuels Facility Opens In Canada 96
Zothecula (1870348) writes Thanks to its extensive composting and recycling facilities, the city of Edmonton, Canada is already diverting approximately 60 percent of its municipal waste from the landfill. That figure is expected to rise to 90 percent, however, once the city's new Waste-to-Biofuels and Chemicals Facility starts converting garbage (that can't be composted or recycled) into methanol and ethanol. It's the world's first such plant to operate on an industrial scale, and Gizmag recently got a guided tour of the place.
Re:Jerk off material for the Greenies (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict within 24 months this plant will be shut down. Write it down. This is just more bullshit left wing crap that someone somehow got funded. Many people will lose their jobs and some may lose their retirement savings. Why Canada is fucking around with this when they enormous reserves of tar sands and other conventional fuels is beyond me. Huge fuck up.
On the contrary although this plant is new they've been doing stuff like this for years, and it makes economic sense.
The problem with garbage is you have to put it somewhere. Landfills fill up quickly and use up otherwise useful land, and the further you ship it the more expensive and polluting it is to transport. The waste reclamation centre drastically reduces the amount you need to dispose of.
Eco-stations claim a lot of the electronic waste, the company that gets the material actually turns a profit on breaking them down.
Compostables get turned into topsoil, traditional recyclables get pulled out and turned into economically useful items, etc.
If your city thinks shipping wealth away burying it with all the resulting externalities is a better alternative then they can keep with their current setup. I prefer the Edmontonian model.
We also treat our sewage rather than dumping in raw into the ocean like some coastal cities.
Re:Jerk off material for the Greenies (Score:5, Insightful)
I only wish more US red states were like Alberta. It would save us a lot of dough.
Re:Countdown to the odor of stench... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever smelled an oil refinery? How about a fracturing operation? A soybean processing plant? A meat processing plant?
How about Lake Erie in the decade before the EPA was established?
If there's such a thing as "clean coal", then I'm pretty sure they can figure out a way to have "clean garbage".