Teru Talk Newsletter
Volume I, Issue
44, December 27,
2011
Teru Talk by Michael
Theroux (pronounced
"Terú")
Happy
Holidays and best wishes
for a Happy New Year! Our
newsletter will go out
Tuesday, January
3rd next
week.
Teru's Trash Talk
Here's a new Old Tradition
guaranteed to irritate your
friends and relatives for
years to come: Carefully
undo, de-tape, fold, save
and reuse your Christmas
wrapping paper, bows and
even the tags. Oh, you have
to practice this one to be
any good at it, but after
awhile those shoeboxes of
folded wrapping paper start
to hold cherished scraps.
Why, this year, I wrapped a
gift for my sweetie and
used up the last of some
Santa paper that must be at
least 20 years old. OK, you
complain, but we don't just
dump it all in the
trash-can - we just LOVE
the colors it makes in our
fireplace! Hummm … yes,
heavy metal salts and odd
bits of plastic are
colorful when incinerated.
Care to take a bet on the
toxic content of the soot
in your chimney? Or, better
yet, maybe it all simply
vanishes into the air …
Eventually, even wrapping
paper reaches the end of
its useful days and into
the can or up the stack it
goes, right? And don't tell
me it ain't no big thing:
residential trash tonnage
collected during the
Holidays goes up 25%. We've
all been doing this so long
we don't even THINK about
it
anymore.
Well, consciousness is a
burden, but we need to
attend to this for the sake
of our great-grandkids.
When something no longer
can be returned for reuse,
and can't be cleaned and
rebuilt for the marketplace
through "recycling", we've
got a global responsibility
to figure out a way NOT to
"dispose", to simply make
it go away so we don't have
to think about it. We need
some stop-gap measure for
the millions of tons of
Stuff otherwise headed for
holes in the ground. Ta-Da!
in the nick of time, we get
Waste Conversion: just pull
those molecules apart,
separate out the really BAD
ones into their own tidy
pile, and put the rest back
to use in a completely
different form. Those
minute bits of Christmas
paper can now be taken
apart by enzymes and
trained microbes into
cellulose, hemi-cellulose
and lignin, each with its
purpose, while the tiny
amounts of metals and
plastics go into a jar to
be stared at and studied
for later (we're figuring
that little problem out,
too.) It all starts with a
new Old Tradition, which
unfortunately, just means
that we need to re-train
ourselves (again) to make
this work. Hope your
Christmas presents were all
you hoped for … and that
they were wrapped in
colorful old, wrinkled
paper. Happy New Year, dear
readers!
Hey
Rube!
Catch your
breath; here comes 2012! Let's
make it a grand Waste
Convertin'
adventure…
The
Week's News
Bus Trips to
the Moon Could Be Fueled on
Discarded Christmas
Paper
Researchers calculate that
between 5 and 12 million liters
of biofuel could be generated
by microbial fermentation from
the 83 square kilometers of
Christmas wrapping paper and
some 1.5 billion Christmas
cards landfilled annually in
the United Kingdom.
12/26/2011
Eco Ventures
Secures $12MM 120-Day
Purchase Order for
Biodiesel
Florida company Eco Ventures
Group, Inc (EVGI) has announced
receipt of a blanket 120-day
purchase order for its
ASTM-grade biodiesel from the
biodiesel supply chain company
Agri Liquid Products of Sandy
Hook, Mississippi.
12/23/2011
Cyclone
Power Acquires Licensee
Advent Power, Assumes DoD
Contracts
Florida-based Cyclone Power
Technologies announced that it
has signed an agreement to
acquire the assets and business
relationships of Advent Power
Systems, Inc., who has been
Cyclone's exclusive licensee
for military applications since
2006.
12/23/2011
INEOS
Receives 10-Year Tax
Abatement for Florida Waste
to Fuel
Facility
The Indian River County Board
of Commissioners approved the
first property tax abatement
agreement under a new tax
abatement ordinance for INEOS
New Planet BioEnergy LLC's
(INPB) Indian River BioEnergy
Center in Vero Beach, Florida.
12/23/2011
Ameresco
Completes Construction on
3-Plant Bioenergy
Complex
Massachusetts based Ameresco
has received Final Acceptance
Certification from the US
Department of Energy (DOE) for
the new Biomass Cogeneration
Facility (BCF) constructed at
the DOE's Savannah River Site
(SRS).
12/22/2011
JBI Signs
Plastic2Oil Fuel Supply
Contract with Indigo Energy,
XTR Energy
JBI, Inc has announced signing
of a long-term fuel supply
contract with wholesale oil
distributor Indigo Energy
Partners, LLC to deliver No. 6
Fuel Oil from JBI's Plastic2Oil
facility in Niagara Falls, New
York.
12/22/2011
UK WRAP
Announces £500,000 Fund for
Food Waste Collection
Projects
The United Kingdom's Waste
& Resources Action
Programme (WRAP) has announced
the launch of a new 3 year,
£500,000 fund to encourage
innovative methods for
collection of food waste from
businesses and public
buildings.
12/21/2011
AESI
Launches Biomass Research
Institute in Wichita for
Feedstock
Testing
Kansas based Alternative Energy
Solutions International (AESI)
has announced the launch of its
Biomass Research Institute
(BRI) in Wichita, Kansas and
scheduled an open house for
February 1-2, 2012.
12/21/2011
Karlsruhe
Institute to Coordinate
BioBoost to Advance Waste
Biomass
Conversion
Germany's famous Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (KIT)
has announced it will
coordinate "BioBoost", a broad
European initiative to advance
development of conversion of
biomass into clean,
engine-compatible fuels and
chemicals, as well as for
generation of biomass-sourced
renewable energy and heat.
12/21/2011
Scorpex
Receives $90MM LOI for IET
Waste Gasification
Equipment
Nevada company Scorpex Inc. has
announced receipt of a
financing Letter of Intent
(LOI) for $90 million in
equipment financing from
conversion systems provider
International Environmental
Technologies, Inc (IET), a
Kentucky corporation with
patented starved air
gasification and thermal
oxidation capabilities.
12/20/2011
Agilyx
Secures $25MM Series C
Funding for Waste Plastic
Conversion
Oregon based waste plastics to
crude oil specialist Agilyx
Corporation has closed its $25
million Series C funding round,
lead by a $4 million investment
by Keating Capital of Greenwood
Village, Colorado.
12/20/2011
JBI receives
Air Permit Exemptions for
Plastic2Oil
Process
The Canadian
firm JBI, Inc. has announced
that use of its patent-pending
Plastic2Oil (P2O) technology
has received an exemption from
air permitting requirements for
use in the first Rock-Tenn
Company plastics processing
site where P2O will be
installed.
12/20/2011
Viridor
Selected for South London
Waste to Energy Recovery
Facility
The South London Waste
Partnership, servicing Croydon,
Kingston, Merton and Sutton,
has announced selection of
Viridor as the Preferred Bidder
toward a 25-year contract to
treat up to 215,000 tonnes per
year of residual waste.
12/20/2011
The Week's Action
Items
Due
02/09/2012: Combined Heat
& Power Offers for
Projects over 5MWe to
SCE
Southern California Edison
(SCE) issued a Combined Heat
and Power Request for Offers
(CHP-RFO) on December 15, 2011
for projects over 5 megawatts
(MWe); complete offer submittal
packages are due February 9,
2012.
12/26/2011
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