Comments on: Trash-to-ethanol firms get digging

With the high price of gas and questions over biofuels, some companies are turning to garbage as a feedstock for ethanol.

[OokiiMamoru]

While I support cellulose ethanol production. The actual production should only come from existing plant material.

Extracting stored carbon in the ground dose not even come close to being carbon neutral.

Why not concentrate on mining for recyclable material, and throwing the unusable waste product in a plasma incinerator for syngas production and using the stored gas for peek time energy production.

This seems like a big waste of investor dollars.

[William Crow]

How many of us are conserving? Even the most vocal "environmentalists" I speak to have done little or nothing in regard to using less energy. No flat screen TVs in their future if they really "care."
I also have found the lifespan of folded fluorescent light bulbs is very short in contrast to what is claimed. Just more mercury in the environment, I guess. I've decided to lower the wattage of my regular bulbs by 10 to 20%. They'll last and are cheap. I'll do this until they are made illegal by "progressives" being forced to use expensive, short life, mercury enhanced folded fluorescent bulbs.

[open-mind]

Before long, I predict all bulbs will be LED. It's gradually happening. Mass production just needs to make them cheap enough.

[BigDawgDoug]

The fact of the matter is that there are 6 BILLION humans on this planet and GROWING. We can all sit by and argue about the economic aspects of green technology but the simple fact is that we need to do something. Doing nothing or burying our heads in the sand will not accomplish anything or magically make the situation go away. This is at least a step forward in the right direction. Look at all of the technologies in the span of human history. Many people have had many great ideas but not all of then were sucessful. The fact is we don't know unless we try. Yes it could be a colossal failure, but we'll never know unless we try. I think this is a good step forward.

[fokkwp]

Landfill should stay underground. It's just like coal in that way. If you dig out paper and other carbon-based garbage, or prevent it from being buried - and then turn it into fuel to burn - you are creating tons of carbon dioxide, not mitigating it.

[mlamonica]

The key point here is that the companies mentioned in this article are not incinerating the trash to make energy. That's already done at landfills.

Different technologies are designed to be less polluting than just burning trash. I don't think there's specific data available on how much cleaner acid hydrolysis or gasification (two technologies mentioned in this article) are. But they are meant to be cleaner. An added potential benefit is reducing with landfill, which is a problem in many areas.