Teru Talk - 2011 Newsletter V-I-5

What is it about waste that gets people so … so irritated? It isn’t the myriad ways for recovery of waste, it isn’t really recycling, or even waste disposal, per se, it’s waste. The very fact that we have such a commonly employed negative term is polarizing. It’s the TV cliché of the punk on the street, throwing empty fast food wrappers on the sidewalk just to show Who’s Boss. I suppose it’s saying to the Powers that Be: You’re Not the Boss o’ Me!! Well, we have always managed to do a lot of stupid stuff, just to show we’re in charge, just to prove something … maybe, just to get attention. It's just dirty.

I heard a tale of a family man in Japan years ago that refused to separate the family’s refuse into the 17-or-so separate containers mandated by the community’s Administration for recycling. Nobody in the whole town would look at them, or talk to them, or sell anything to them for a month. Maybe that was just a false rumor; maybe not. It does tell us that not recycling in Japan is socially unacceptable.

If someone is consistently throwing something away and you ask them to give it to you, all of a sudden it has Value. If it has Value, it gets counted; we usually don’t count what we don’t value, so counting no-value “waste” is a lot harder than counting “recovered resources”.

“Say, buddy, mind if I have your waste ?” … “Get lost, ya bum … that isn’t waste, it‘s Resource.”

Hey Rube!

New Chinese Ethanol Plant Will Use LanzaTech Offgas-to-Fuel Technology New Zealand based LanzaTech, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the steel and iron conglomerate Baosteel Group Corporation have begun construction of a 100,000 gallon per year ethanol plant that will use LanzaTech’s gas fermentation technology to make fuel ethanol from the flue off-gas emissions produced by Baosteel’s steel mill. 03/27/2011

Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Students Learn to Make Biodiesel Florida Biodiesel Inc will provide a modular biodiesel system to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College to demonstrate Green Fuel technology for on-campus activities, and show students how to make renewable energy. 03/27/2011

ECRI Explores Large Scale Collection and Composting of Food Waste The Environmental Council of Rhode Island (ECRI) held a community meeting last week to explain and explore the potential for collection of the community’s food waste and conversion to compost and renewable energy as an alternative to landfill disposal. 03/27/2011

DTSC Announces Green Chemistry Initiative Sub-Committee Meetings The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has announced meeting agendas for the three recently-formed sub-committees within their Green Ribbon Science Panel (GRSP). 03/26/2011

Researchers at the Montana State University (MSU) have announced that their Eucalyptus-oil-producing fungus Hypoxylon sp. is now ready for licensing. 03/26/2011

Wilmington, Delaware based Butamax Advanced Biofuels has announced that the US Trade and Patent Office has granted a patent for their proprietary isobutanol production methods, covering a key step in their biobutanol production pathway using genetic constructs with highly active enzymes. 03/24/2011

DOE Fully Funds Commitment to EdeniQ and Logos for CCM Pilot Biorefinery Logos Technologies Inc has announced that their partnership with cellulosic fuels company EdeniQ has received full commitment of $20.5 million from the US Department of Energy (DOE) under the Integrated Biorefinery Program. 03/24/2011

Delta Diablo Sanitation District Receives $1MM for Gasification Project In yesterday’s Business meeting, the California Energy Commission (CEC) unanimously approved an award of $999,924 to the Antioch-based Delta Diablo Sanitation District to develop, demonstrate, and implement a system to turn biosolids into energy. 03/24/2011

The Gasification Technology Council (GTC) has announced their 2011 Gasification Technology Workshop schedule, this year to be held April 6-7 in Tampa, Florida. 03/23/2011

NativeEnergy has announced their partnership with Rainier BioGas and three Washington state dairies to build a 1200-cow manure digester which will generate 1 megawatt of electricity for sale to Puget Sound Energy and reduce over 4,000 tons of greenhouse gas emission annually. 03/23/2011

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host a free training webinar on March 31, 2011 for their Co-Digestion Economic Assessment Tool. 03/22/2011

The international organization Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) will publically launch its global standard and certification system at the World Biofuels Market event in Rotterdam, Netherlands on March 23, 2011. 03/22/2011

Green Fuels America (GFA) will manufacture their 5,000 gallon per day FuelMatic and other commercial biodiesel processors in their Sparks, Nevada headquarters. 03/21/2011

Due 06/02/2011: Comments on Fuel Quality, Renewable Energy Directives The United Kingdom’s (UK) Department for Transport (DfT) released parallel Consultation Documents this month, seeking public comment on the Government’s regulatory plans to come to parity with the greenhouse gas intensity reduction requirements of European Directive 2009/30/EC. 03/24/2011

Teru Talk Newsletter