{"id":217,"date":"2009-08-20T00:57:03","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T07:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ensobottles.com\/blog\/?p=217"},"modified":"2009-08-20T00:57:03","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T07:57:03","slug":"rubbish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"RUBBISH! The Archaeology of Garbage, Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rubbish1\"The book titled Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy was a very interesting read.\u00a0 Created in 1973, the archaeology of garbage was a program primarily created as an exercise in archeology for students at the University of Arizona Tucson.\u00a0 The most fascinating aspect of the book is the discoveries of what our garbage tells about us as a society.\u00a0 It was interesting the amount of detailed behavior that can be discovered by going through trash.\u00a0 For example, in times of product scarcity our garbage shows that we waste more of the scarce product. Another major fact Dr. Rathje\u2019s team discovered is that our landfills are not filling up from disposable diapers which is taking up about 1% of a landfills mass.<\/p>\n

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There have been some in the PLA (corn plastics) industry who use quotes from Dr. Rathje\u2019s book to support an argument that composting biodegradable plastics is better for the environment than landfilling them.\u00a0 Their argument takes some of the data out on context by looking at the hundred year old \u201cpoor\u201d environmental designs of landfills.\u00a0 The printing of \u201cRUBBISH!\u201d was in 1991 with most data provided in the book ending in 1988.\u00a0 Most of the data in the book is over 20 years old.\u00a0 As with many things from our past we eventually discover better and more environmentally sound solutions.\u00a0 Yes, it is absolutely true that traditional dry-tomb landfilling is not the best solution for dealing with our garbage.\u00a0 As a society we have made significant improvements to the methods we use for disposing of garbage.\u00a0 Since the writing of the book we have implemented hundreds of recycling programs as well as the EPA requiring methane from the anaerobic biodegradation process happening in landfills to be captured and burned or used to create clean energy.\u00a0 The EPA in the last 5 years has also changed laws with recirculating leachate through a landfill so to accelerate biodegradation by up to 10x.<\/p>\n

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Dr. Rathje does briefly address composting as a solution to some of our organic garbage.\u00a0 He points out that composting is expensive\u00a0 and the issues is that most compost becomes tainted with hazardous elements, such as the heavy metals used in inks and pigments as well as yard waste containing traces of pesticides and herbicides.\u00a0 Another issue with composting biodegradable plastics is that the corn used in fermenting the lactic acid is Genetically Modified corn, because of this, if PLA plastics are composted that compost cannot be labeled \u201corganic\u201d.\u00a0 For many composting facilities this would severely impact the marketability of the compost material.<\/p>\n

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What Dr. William Rathje, and those using the book to bash biodegradable plastics neglect to mention is that over the last few years we have made significant improvements to the way we handle our trash.\u00a0 One of these improvements is called landfill bioreactors, which is not discussed at all in the book.\u00a0 These types of landfills are designed in the beginning to better control the anaerobic biodegradation process by circulating the leachate back through the garbage.\u00a0 This not only helps to accelerate anaerobic biodegradation by adding moisture but it has also been discovered to improve the quality of the leachate.\u00a0 These bioreactors are built with collection systems for collecting not only the leachate but also the methane.\u00a0 So from the beginning of the bioreactor landfill life the methane is being captured and typically used to create clean inexpensive energy.\u00a0 In fact, energy from methane captured from landfills is the least expensive form of \u201cgreen\u201d energy we can create today.\u00a0 It is less costly than solar, wind, or hydro.\u00a0 In April 2004, the EPA finalized a rule permitting the transformation of landfills into bioreactors.\u00a0 Landfill bioreactors produce MUCH more gas than traditional landfills, about 10 times the amount and are at concentrations of up to 50%.\u00a0 Bioreactors with their advanced LFG collection systems are able to collect more than 90% of the methane gasses.<\/p>\n

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Another benefit of bioreactor landfills is that the life of the landfill is extended by as much as 25 years.\u00a0 This means that the same physical space of land that would traditionally have been filled up and capped can now be used for another 25 years longer before needing additional bioreactor landfill cells.\u00a0 There is some discussion that a bioreactor landfill could later on be dug up to use the soil for fertilizer and then reuse the landfill space again, but this is yet to be a reality.<\/p>\n

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The key to utilizing anaerobic biodegradation with organic garbage is that it creates a greater value proposition over composting.\u00a0 With composting, the organic material is artificially processed to accelerate aerobic biodegradation resulting in compost material which makes a great rich soil.\u00a0 What is off gassed is CO2 which is released into the atmosphere as a GHG.\u00a0 Some would argue that this would be a zero sum game but it really depends on the organic material and the life cycle of that material.<\/p>\n

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Markets for compost material are very specific to the geographical location of that composting facility.\u00a0 In many cases today, there are not enough markets available to utilize the compost material and a lot of it ends up as soil cover in landfills.\u00a0 With utilizing anaerobic biodegradation either in anaerobic digesters or bioreactor landfills we can capture the methane and use it for cleans energy.\u00a0 Once the methane is burned to create that energy the CH4 is converted into CO2 which now we are right back to where we were with composting but now we created clean energy which reduces our reliance on fossil fuels.\u00a0 The soil that remains from anaerobic biodegradation can also be used as fertilizer.\u00a0 The additional value proposition of creating CH4 vs. CO2 has much more value and results in a better environmental solution.<\/p>\n

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According to the EPA as of April 2009, there are approximately 480 operational LFG energy projects in the United States. In addition, about 130 projects are currently under construction or are exploring development options and opportunities. These are landfills that convert the LFG to clean, inexpensive energy.\u00a0 New Jersey\u2019s Governor Jon S. Corzine’s Energy Master Plan touts landfill methane gas as one of the key renewable energy sources that the state hopes will combine to supply 30 percent of New Jersey’s electricity by 2020. http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2008\/10\/27\/new-jersey-landfills-capt_n_138076.html<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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There is much we can learn about our past, present and how to better design our future from both a social and environmental perspective.\u00a0 It is in the nature of archaeology to look at the past but it is in the best interest for the human race to stay focused on the future.<\/p>\n

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References:<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.bioreactor.org<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/address>\n
http:\/\/www.methanetomarkets.org<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/address>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Danny Clark
\nENSO Bottles, LLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book titled Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy was a very interesting read.\u00a0 Created in 1973, the archaeology of garbage was a program primarily created as an exercise in archeology for students at the University of Arizona Tucson.\u00a0 The most fascinating aspect of the book is the discoveries of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[810,194,625,119,816],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-blogs","tag-biodegradable-pet-bottles","tag-biodegradable-plastic","tag-biodegradable-plastic-bottles","tag-trash","tag-waste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}