Teru Talk Newsletter
Volume V, Issue 26, June
29,
2015
Teru Talk by Michael
Theroux (pronounced
"Terú")
Teru's Trash Talk
We define our Communities by
how we are living in them. Oh,
we draw boundaries and name
towns, cities, counties – but
those boundaries usually don’t
align with how we work and live
within the landscape, and how
we interact with each other.
One way to look at
community
structure
is by
picking a topic and watching
its local function. Efficient,
easy to live in communities
have infrastructures that are
well matched to the actual
functioning of its residents.
Haphazard city layouts make
getting across town a pain,
finding a local market
difficult, and getting to a
hospital in time, nearly
impossible. Then there’s
resource
efficiency.
Think about
water: rain falls on the land,
runs toward the low areas and
then outward, via gullies and
streams. We call these
areas
watersheds
, and
communities with well draining
watersheds flood less, and
generally function
better.
When
we're talking trash (no pun
intended), we speak of
wastesheds
.
In an efficient community, all
the trash generated gets
collected, trundled toward
pick-apart centers. Most then
goes to the local dump, some
goes further toward markets for
recycled goods. Well thought
out and equipped communities
make this task less onerous,
less costly. Lack of
appropriate infrastructure
means long hauls, more cost,
and more disposal than
recovery.
Sanitation has to come first:
most communities have some
centralized place where all the
rotting nasty stuff goes in a
hole and gets covered over, or
maybe put in a big burner and
reduced to ash. Building
regional landfills and
incinerators generally replaced
burn barrels and made living in
our communities safer and
cleaner. But that one way flow
costs money and more over,
costs resources. We’ve been
paying the piper so long we
just count is as community
dues.
Past community disasters and
successes can teach us to
rethink and rebuild what we are
doing today, and to peer
forward to where we need to be.
We know now that we really,
really must stop disposing of
perfectly good used resources
only to go get new resources.
But why is this process
of recycling
so
difficult and costly? Follow
the Money. We build in the
means for disposal, but
we send out
for the
means of reprocessing.
Everything has to travel
further to be remade than to be
thrown away, and every mile
costs in many ways. The jobs
for hauling and dumping are
local, but what about the jobs
for turning discards back to
foundation resources, and on to
remanufactured goods? Those
jobs happen in someone else’s
community, quite often someone
else’s
country.
And no, it's NOT OK to throw a
fit and stop that resource
recovery
here,
only to have
that burden and its
solution happen
elsewhere. We’ve got one
planet, folks, and
collateral damage
elsewhere is still
avoidable damage. We made
this mess; we need to
clean it up, and make
things
better.
We need to bring it all back
home, back local, back
regional. Reprocessing
infrastructure isn’t going to
be cheap either. We must accept
the
local
economic,
social, and environmental
cost of remaking our
"wastesheds" into cyclic
machines capable of
managing resource
recovery as efficiently
as we have learned to
manage disposal. A
community's waste should
be that same community's
problem to solve, and can
be that same community's
golden resource to
recover.
Hey Rube!
It used to be easy to avoid the
problem and claim "we don't
have the technology." That old
excuse just doesn't hold water
anymore. Check this week's news
for new tools and
methods.
This Week's Top Story
Mixed Waste
Processing May Increase
Recycling and MSW Diversion
Rates
The American Chemistry Council
has announced a new report that
looks at processing mixed waste
to extract recyclables finds
potential to significantly
increase recycling rates of
certain materials and diversion
rates of municipal solid waste
(MSW) in general.
06/25/2015
The Week's News
Suez
Environnement Inaugurates
New Organic Reuse Centre In
France
Paris based SUEZ environnement
has announced the inauguration
of a new organic reuse centre
that features a methanation
unit developed entirely by the
Group. The startup of this new
unit in Faulquemont, 40km from
the city of Metz, France,
represents a concrete step
forwards in the energy
transition of the region.
06/26/2015
Bullfrog
Power Launches Green
Transportation
Fuel
Canadian company Bullfrog
Power® has announced the launch
of green fuel, a new solution
to help advance the shift to a
more renewably powered
transportation system.
06/26/2015
CEC Proposes
Awards for Early and
Pre-Commercial Biofuels
Development
The California Energy
Commission (CEC) has issued a
Notice of Proposed Awards for
Grant Solicitation PON-14-602,
Biofuels Early and
Pre-Commercial Technology
Development, released in
October 2014.
06/25/2015
Berkeley Lab
Validates Innovative Microvi
Bio-Ethanol
Technology
Microvi Biotechnologies has
demonstrated breakthrough
improvements to biological
ethanol production while
working with the Advanced
Biofuels Process Demonstration
Unit (ABPDU) at the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory
(Berkeley Lab).
06/25/2015
Alphabet
Energy's Modular
PowerModule™ Converts Waste
Heat to
Power
California based Alphabet
Energy, Inc has announced the
PowerModule™ as a standalone
product that can convert almost
any industrial source of
exhaust heat into valuable
electricity.
06/24/2015
DOE to Issue
Funding Opportunity for
Innovative Bioenergy
Technologies
The US Department of Energy
(DOE) Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy
has announced its intent to
issue, on behalf of the
Bioenergy Technologies Office
(BETO), funding opportunity
announcement (FOA) targeting
innovative technologies and
solutions to help advance
bioenergy development.
06/24/2015
GIB Invests
£2m in SHARC Sewage Heat
Recovery Projects Across
Scotland
Green Investment Bank (GIB) has
announced that the
Equitix-managed fund Energy
Savings Investments (ESI) is
investing £2m in a sewage heat
recovery system installation
program in locations across
Scotland, beginning with
Borders College.
06/24/2015
Valmet
Supplies Automation to New
Waste-To-Energy Plant in
Worcestershire
Finland company Valmet
Corporation will supply
automation to the new
EnviRecover waste-to-energy
plant in Hartlebury,
Worcestershire, United Kingdom
(UK). The delivery will take
place in November 2015, and the
system will be handed over to
the customer in November 2016.
06/24/2015
Tennessee
Awards $250K Grant for
PHGE's Waste Gasification
Plant
Nashville based PHG Energy
(PHGE) has announced that a
$250,000 grant of matching
funds has been awarded to The
City of Lebanon to assist with
construction of a new
waste-to-energy facility that
will reduce landfill usage and
provide clean electrical power.
06/23/2015
CRI Licenses
IH2 Technology to SynSel for
Norwegian Biomass to Fuel
Demo
Norway company SynSel Energi
AS, a member of SynSel Energy
Inc (SynSel), has entered into
an IH2® process demonstration
license agreement with United
Kingdom based CRI/Criterion
Catalyst Company Ltd, a member
of the CRI Catalyst group.
06/23/2015
Viridor
Energy-from-Waste Residue
Will Become Carbon8 Building
Blocks
Viridor
announced that it has signed a
ten-year contract with Carbon8
Aggregates Ltd for the removal,
treatment, and recycling of Air
Pollution Control residue
(APCr) from Viridor's Energy
Recovery Facilities (ERFs) in
Exeter, Cardiff, Ardley and
Peterborough.
06/22/2015
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