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  • One man's trash is enough to power another man's homeand a bunch of it can power

  • 20,000 homesSo what are we waiting for??

  • You guys, a company called GreenSky is taking in sorted municipal and commercial waste and

  • outputting JET FUEL. Yep. Trash to airplane fuel. Boeing flew a 787 using biofuel last

  • year to prove it could be done, but GreenSky wants to make enough fuel from trash to supply

  • ALL the needs for London City Airport. British Airways has pledged to purchase ALL 50,000

  • metric tons of fuel from GreenSky! They're going to fly all over using your TRASH for

  • fuel and also charge you to put a bag into the binnot the trash bin, Brits, the OVERHEAD

  • bin.

  • Look, trash is everywhere. We throw away 4.3 pounds (2kg) of waste every day and 55% of

  • all the trash generated in the United States goes into landfills. But, according to Scientific

  • American, if we converted the 460 million tons of trash produced in North America properly,

  • we could make 12.4 billion gallons (47B liters) of ethanol. That's a lotta hooch -- roughly

  • the same amount as produced from all ethanol-bound corn. And the process is REALLY easy; all

  • you need is to unleash some sulfuric acid to break down the cellulose, and some select

  • enzymes and microbes to ferment the resulting slurry into fuel. Done, you're flying.

  • Biofuel from trash is great, but we need to separate the trash BEFORE we can do that.

  • So while we use that in the future, we can ALSO burn grandpa's trash too! In 1986 there

  • were over 7,600 small dumps, today there are around 1900 mega-dumps which should have enough

  • capacity for centuries of garbage. In 2008, power from landfills exceeded solar power

  • production in New York and New Jersey, and it's expanded significantly in the last seven

  • years. Of the 1900 landfills over 640 have added the technology to harness the power

  • of landfill gases (LFGs) and converting them to energy.

  • LFG is produced by anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that doesn't need oxygen) buried deep within

  • landfills. The anaerobic bacteria munch on our trash and poop out methane which would

  • NORMALLY be real bad. Methane is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, and

  • according to the EPA, municipal solid waste is the third-largest source of human-related

  • methane emissions in the US. But, if we capture it before it floats up and makes climate change

  • worse, we can use it for good AND chillax with some oil burning too.

  • Methane is an odorless, colorless hydrocarbon (CH4), and because the bacteria are trapped

  • underground, companies can find pockets and suck it out with high-vacuum pipes. Once collected,

  • the methane is cooled, cleaned, and mixed with mercaptan to give it a detectable odor

  • before they send it out to natural gas plants to be burned for fuel. Yep, natural gas can

  • come from rock, or oil deposits but that's a "dirty" natural gas, a mix of 99 percent

  • methane with some propane, ethane and sulfur and helium mixed in. The biomass methane is

  • pretty much just CH4. Bacteria are good like that.

  • The EPA's Landfill Methane Outreach Program is hoping to encourage companies to set up

  • on top of landfills and suck in as much methane as possible, because otherwise we're just

  • letting dollars float away. As of 2013, LFG captured energy was powering 1.8 million homes.

  • So just to recap, we throw away a lot of stuff and just let it sit there, but thanks to these

  • technologies getting trashy could clean up

  • the world.

One man's trash is enough to power another man's homeand a bunch of it can power

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