Hope you enjoy the video above, and are not offended by the edginess. While we can all use a laugh in these tough times, America’s energy and environmental problems definitely aren’t a laughing matter.
 It all adds up
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Two minutes with a calculator shows that the size of America’s annual waste stream is truly staggering. Your share of America’s trash? Currently it’s about 4.5 – 6 pounds of trash per day.
Multiply 4.5 pounds by 306 million people, then multiply by 365 days to get the number of total pounds, then divide by 2000 to get the approximate annual number in tons: 251 Million Tons Per Year |
Source: EPA, which estimated 254 million tons per year in 2007.
But wait, America’s trash footprint is even larger: This “raw numbers” calculation by the EPA does not include hazardous waste, commercial waste, industrial waste and other types of carbon feedstocks, such as stranded or flared methane, tar sands, coal slag, petroleum coke, or sewer sludge.
Now add what nature generously provides that can be classified as non-crop biomass, i.e., the woody biomass (leaves, needles, barks, branches, small diameter trees) that can be sustainably harvested from forests and private woodlands and wildland-urban interfaces to this figure. Use 12-18 dry tons of harvestable biomass per acre of thinned Western forest as a multiplier. Millions of acres of our national forests are full of dead and dying, beetle-killed trees.
CO2 emissions from 50,000 coal-fired power plants worldwide are the globe’s most concentrated source of greenhouse gases. What if all those tons of CO2 going up the stack became clean energy, along with improving the performance of coal stock that is no longer incinerated, but gasified in a closed-loop process with almost no emissions and turned into clean transportation fuel?
In addition, woody, non-crop biomass from forest thinning projects and other lands is most often piled and burned. All that wood smoke and CO2 goes into the atmosphere, and on public lands, it costs taxpayer money to fund the projects. To be sure, America’s forests need tending to remove beetle-killed trees, reduce fuel loads, and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. We can turn it all into energy that’s cleaner, safer, and smarter.
When it comes to technology for turning waste into abundant green, higher mixed alcohol fuels, a carbon is a carbon is a carbon. Trash, tires, coal, petroleum coke, non-crop biomass, methane, it’s all good feedstock. And don’t worry, the world won’t run out. The more you look for carbon, the more you’ll find because it’s everywhere in myriad form.
We strongly believe there is more than enough non-crop biomass and other carbon-based feedstocks such as Municipal Solid Waste to work with at local levels in thousands of America’s cities and towns. What there hasn’t been until now is a concerted nationwide grassroots effort to put America’s trash to work in communities for the direct benefit of local economies, the national economy, and the environment.
Learn more about America’s trash
