Our visit to the landfill done in freezing temperatures and rain made the overall experience rather dismal. That being said we were taught about the operation of a landfill and how they use layers upon layers of compressed garbage to produce methane and then most of the time they end up simply burning this methane. The most surprising thing to me about this is that it is in most cases not worth the investment to harness the methane and use it for energy, but instead it is economically better to just burn it. I thought that, especially with the tax credits, producing energy would equal in importance as finding a place to store the garbage but I guess I was wrong. That being said I think that the government should provide more incentive to landfills to produce methane because otherwise the gasses produced there will all be wasted and some will end up in the atmosphere which is obviously not what we need. Lastly, I think that the fact that economically it is not worth producing energy is the reason why this technology is not used in the US. As we've seen time and again, unless there is a profit to be made nothing will happen. Economics trumps social and environmental factors every time.
Picture Time.
So this is our TA clearly enjoying the warmth of the bus and excited about the day ahead.
These are the enclosed flares where the gas is burned and most of it is contained.
This is part of the flare system. The gas is compressed here and separated to go to the two different towers.
This is a pretty picture of the lovely day and mountain of garbage covered by grass.
One of the electric generators
The rest of the generators.
And that concludes our trip to the landfill.
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