50 kwh/day = 4.55 Torontos

11 kwh/day/Toronto

That’s a lot of Torontos to power one household. Heck, Michigan could start returning the favor and sending their trash to Toronto. Then I could power my whole house!

Forget the environmental argument from Daniel. This technology can’t even sustain itself economically. Worse yet, it would be a taxpayer’s nightmare, because it would surely garner copious subsidies while allowing somebody (one somebody) to run one one-fifth of their household.

I would love to see us use our trash for power generation, but somebody is going to have to come up with some tech to increase product efficiency.

Having said that, it’s better than putting it in a landfill, and I do believe that experience and implementation is sometimes the best R&D.

Hardline environmentalists like daniel are not doing their cause any favours. Garbage is a reality. It’s not going away. There is no silver bullet, and their probably never will be. It’s going to take a combination of various solutions ranging from recylcing, waste reduction, and innovative new technologies like that of Plasco. It’s also going to take acceptance from the ideologues that we need to stop creating barriers and start creating reasonable solutions.

While Plasco’s conversion of garbage into synthetic gas does create electricity, it’s not going to solve our electricity problems. The genius behind the solution is that it uses efficient electricity generation to make the technology economically viable. Goodwill is not enough to save the planet from climate change, but an economy based on highly-efficient use of its resources is.

As tyler says, even if we succesfully divert 60% through reduce, reuse, recyle programs, there is still the remaining 40%. The Michigan border is going to close imminantly, and then Toronto will have a major crisis. It’s still going to be cheaper to reduce waste than it will be to process it into energy. So we need to get away from the argument that daniel makes. It is only going to lead to inaction on this issue.

Thank you tyler for getting it.

The response to the first comment is great. The energy/waste issues facing the developed countries are an incredible hurdle and no silver bullet exists. Until we actually start trying some of these technologies out, demonstrate their viability, evaluate, then proceed, we’ll never get anywhere. The first step is to try everything, even if the plasma arc technology isn’t the best, it sure is a start. Go with it.

Please don’t confuse this Blog or my Clean Break column as an environmental column; strictly speaking it isn’t. I’m all for saving the environment but there must be some balance in that mission, and simply stating that you are disappointed I didn’t address the waste issue itself is missing the point: That waste isn’t completely going away and must be dealt with. Gasification using plasma-arc technology is one way to go about it, and from what I’ve seen so far it’s one of the best ways.

You speak of diversion and reducing waste, but using this reasoning you must be against the organics green bin program as well — it simply converts our organic waste into inert landfill and flares off the methane that’s produced? How is that any better or worse than gasification of other residual waste?

Rejecting a technology out of the concern you just raised is one of the reasons why we’ll be debating new technologies for the next decade and, in the end, doing nothing to deal with a real problem.

Environmentalism isn’t about figuring out how to more carefully dispose of waste, it’s trying not to create any non-reusable waste in the first place. While gasification may very well be cleaner than sending mountains of polystyrene and batteries off to Michigan, it doesn’t negate the inherent waste of such products.

your suggestion that the slag can be used to mix with road asphalt sounds good, but that’s not re-use. At best, it’s waste redirection. Sustainability is making sure any waste we generate is absorbed into the environment as a useful product, and no matter what we do to the stuff we throw out, the majority of it will never be reclaimable.

Granted, gasification is better than coal, better than nuclear, even pitted against natural gas it has its merits. But it’s not sustainable and in my view, anything that continues to permit (or even encourage) waste not a step in the right direction.