Dealing With Garbage

Dealing With Garbage. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Garbage is something we all have to deal with from urban to rural areas. Humans generate trash. Some recycle, some don't but in the end there is always something left over that needs to be dealt with and landfills are bursting at the seams. Now the nation's largest landfill owner wants to team with a Bend-based company to try something new according to Waste Managements Director of Sustainability, Jackie Lang. LANG: This is exciting technology. It is technology that essentially turns trash into clean fuel in about 30 seconds. It's technology that uses extremely high heat, about 20,000 degrees to change household waste into a gas that can then be converted into clean transportation fuel or renewable energy. It's also the latest attempt to turn the nation's municipal garbage, the massive collection of trash from households and businesses, into a resource, make money off it and cut waste going into landfills while adding jobs. LANG: For the Pacific Northwest this is promising green technology that's likely to generate green jobs in the years to come. We know that the Pacific Northwest wants green jobs and green technologies; the challenge is developing green technologies that are viable for the long term. The joint venture between InEnTec of Bend and Houston-based Waste Management is a pilot program. LANG: The pilot that we are launching is an opportunity to bring a sustainable, economical technology to our region and then hopefully to other parts of the country. The pilot is moving forward. The purpose of the pilot, which is the very first step, is to prove the economic viability of the process. At present Lang says there is no timeline for bringing broader applications to the rest of the U.S. LANG: We have a lot to learn with this pilot. This is a project that is part of Waste Management's broader efforts to develop green technologies on a number of different fronts. We're focusing on renewable energy and green technologies that use waste to do good things like generate clean fuels and renewable energy. We don't have an exact timeline as to when the technology might be available for broader application but we're moving forward as fast as we can. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.