Anaerobic Digestion: Trash-to-Treasure Technology Rehabilitates Landfills; (or how to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear)

Landfills – ya gotta hate em! Smelly, vermin-infested health hazards; the unsightly proof's of man's careless conservancy. Or not. Could they actually hold the key to the energy/pollution conundrum plaguing our planet? Some forward-thinking communities think they could. In fact, with waste-to-energy supporters taking center stage in the search for viable alternatives to fossil-fuel based energy, rotting heaps of refuse are being recast as renewable sources of energy.

One of the technologies used to accomplish this remarkable revision is anaerobic digestion. Gobbling garbage, naturally occurring bacteria breaks down organic material (such as food waste) and transforms it into either bio-gas or landfill gas (depending on the type of facility), which is then captured and used to produce energy. The left-over substance – digestate - makes a great fertilizer. This two-fold consequence of the chemical reaction to decomposition not only reduces the size of landfills, it diminishes a dump's carbon footprint by controlling methane (a greenhouse gas) emissions. Talk about a sea-change!

According to the blog Harvest, a leper colony in Bombay, India was the first to realize the benefits of this kind of re-purposing, in 1859. By 1895 the town of Exeter, England was using bio-gas from a septic tank to light their street lamps. Waste-to-energy programs have been in place all across Europe since the 1930's, helping to power homes and businesses – even fuel transportation needs. Germany - the most invested country - boasts having a whopping 6,800 (and counting) large-scale anaerobic digesters at their disposal, while China uses roughly 8,000,000 smaller, 'family-sized' models to meet the heating and cooking demands of it's rural residents.

As long as there is a steady supply of organic waste for feedstock, agriculture, industrial, waste water and municipal solid waste systems can all reap the benefits of anaerobic digestion. According to the Center For Climate and Energy Solutions, agricultural anaerobic digesters produced 453,000 mega-watt hours (Mwh) of energy in the U.S. in 2010. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) facilities generated enough power to heat and light 433,000 homes.

But it is not just about power production, pollution reduction or plant food:

• Waste-water treatment processes destroy disease-causing bacteria while breaking down sewer sludge.
• Landfill bio-reactors eliminate odors caused by organic decomposition.
• Properly run AD operations obviate the hazards associated with accumulating, flammable landfill gases .

As with advancements in any field, proper training and maintenance are absolutely necessary to ensure operational success. But with newer technologies and improved designs, (digesters can even be structured underground!) most of the financial and aesthetic drawbacks to anaerobic digestion have been eliminated. The process is now viewed as a win-win-win for waste management, energy production and the environment. Instead of being seen as toxic eyesores, landfills today can give proof to the ingenuity of man. With trash-to-treasure technology, turning waste into energy is clearly an idea whose time has come.

Note. I am doing a little 're-purposing of my own, I first published this on Hubpages on 11/14/2012.