Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Green Waste

Trash, like sports, is big business in the U.S. Consider Waste Management, one of the largest corporations involved in the trash business. Waste Management is so large that it has or has had sports marketing arrangements with NASCAR, the NFL (Rams) and the PGA Tour. All the while the corporation is polishing up its green credentials while trying to get more people to use their trash hauling and recycling services. Money, sports and trash.

Not that I'm not opposed to it at all. In fact, it was a trash can I saw recently in Arlington, VA that made me think about garbage and environmentalism.

I was on my way to the Rosslyn metro station when I did a double-take at a trash can with the ubiquitous logo. They're everywhere; that's not why I stopped, mouth slack ready to give my forehead a "V-8" slap. The trash can was different, but still a trash can. It was the words on the side that were special -- SOLAR.

Whoa! A solar powered trash can? Just what did a solar powered trash can do. Well, it didn't do what I thought it did. It didn't take empty, used up aluminum cans and pop out a fres
h, clean and shiny 12 oz Coke. Nope, not that. Actually, the trash can didn't do very much recycling at all. All it did was crush stuff. Give an aluminum pop can to a nine year old and he'll crush it like a bug. But it's not the crushing that made the can so cool, it was the solar power that juiced up the crunching.

Each one of us has passed by an overflowing garbage can at least once, including an overstuffed newspaper bin. Cities are cash strapped to pick up the garbage as it is, adding special recycling trips only adds to their burden. That's the smart idea behind the "Big Belly" solar powered trash compactor, produced by Massachusetts-based Seahorse Power Company.

According to the company's website, the solar powered trash compactors scrunch down garbage enabling the "cans" to hold as much as five times the waste of a similarly sized can. That the contraption is solar powered is a bonus, cutting the cost to local governments of running the machines through traditional electricity, and reduces trips by trucks that collect trash.

Later that day while riding on the Washington area subway, a billboard inside the railcar caught my eye. It
touted the another energy and waste deal -- ethanol. Ethanol can be made from corn or just about any other plant-based cellulosic substance. Corn is the number one source of ethanol in the U.S., but ethanol can be made from barley, wheat, sugar cane (as it is in Brazil in massive amount) and something called switchgrass.

Switchgrass is not your typical lawn grass; it's not even pretty to look at. But it sure is powerful. A Scientific American article points out that switchgrass can produce about 20 times more energy than ethanol. And it's cheap. Most of us think of it as garbage, something to be ripped up, torn up and planted over. Real trash. But there's value and more importantly, there's energy, in the ugly grass.

There's innovation going on all around us in an effort to reduce the negative effects of our standard of living on the environment that sustains us. And a day commuting showed me recently that how we handle our trash and think of energy sources might be signposts to a more sustainable future.

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