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| John
Trotti |
Technology
and MSW are not strangers by any means. We’ve witnessed huge advances
in collection, transfer, and materials-processing equipment and systems….
Perhaps it’s time to concentrate more effort on technologies capable
of transforming wastes into marketable products. Two leap immediately
to mind: landfill gas and predisposal biomass materials.
The foregoing
were the title and gist of my Editor’s Comments exactly one year ago,
and in light of subsequent events, it seems appropriate to bring it
up to date.
When California
Governor Gray Davis decided to eliminate methyl tertiary butyl ether
(MTBE) from the state’s gasoline by the end of 2002, his pronouncement
set in motion an explosion of events, the pieces of which are just now
beginning to sort themselves out.
MTBE has
been used as a deicer in cold climates in the United States since 1979
and used since 1990 primarily in the winter months—and year-round in
California since 1994—as a fuel additive to improve the combustion properties
of gasoline. Its resistance to biodegradability, rapid movement through
soil, and affinity for water, however, more than offset its contributions
to air quality. It’s a nasty water pollutant.
As early
as February 1991, the California EPA office of Environmental Health
Hazard Assessment established an interim action level for MTBE of 35
parts per billion in water. In 1995, our magazine Remediation Management
began to focus attention on the groundwater threat posed by the substance,
but it was not until 1999 that it became the target of public debate.
Suddenly aware of groundwater risks, governing and regulating agencies
around the country began to take action to ban the use of MTBE-laced
fuels.
Noting the
increasing level of public concern, the May/June 1999 issue of MSW
Management pointed out the opportunity for conversion of much of
the organic fraction of the MSW stream as a feedstock for ethanol to
replace MTBE in reformulated fuels. It stated, "There are a number
of waste-to-synfuel technologies that are well past the ‘maybe’ stage.
Now with the almost-certain restriction on the use of MTBE as a component
of automotive fuel, we may be facing just the kind of opportunity that’s
needed to jump-start the introduction of a new product for waste managers
to market." Taking this thought further, MSW Management
cosponsored a conference in December 1999 to explore fundamental questions
relating to sustainable materials management in the 21st century and
the potential role of new conversion technologies in processing portions
of the solid wastestream into renewable and environmentally benign fuels,
chemicals, and sources of clean energy. The text of the conference—available
on-line at http://grc.org/cec/pubs/conv.pdf—addresses the technologies,
opportunities, and barriers to commercialization of biowaste conversion.
Issues
and Options
Certainly
there’s nothing new about nonpetroleum-based fuels synthesized through
a wide variety of methods and based on feedstocks that cover nearly
the entire material spectrum. Significantly, however, there is a large
group in favor of replacing of fossil fuels with cleaner-burning fuels
made from renewable resources. Spurred by low farm-product prices in
recent years—corn in particular—agriculture interests have been chief
supporters of incorporating biofuels in gasoline. Thus, as we near decision
points on meeting the new, more restrictive regulations introduced earlier
this year as part of the Clean Air Act of 1990, it seems likely that
some sort of "renewable-content" requirement will come into
being.
While the
most obvious issues raised by the MTBE debate are air and water quality,
we face a far more fundamental challenge in developing a workable strategy
in how we are to apportion and use the world’s resources in light of
an emerging global economy. In short, we’ve run head-on into the issue
of sustainability in terms of economics, environmental preservation,
and the very way we’re able to go about our lives.
Suspend for
a moment what you believe to be the threats to our lifestyle today and
imagine a situation five years from now when the number of people on
the planet with the means to purchase automobiles and everything else
we produce, consume, and toss in the trash will double…and then double
once again before the end of the decade. How does the way we currently
manage our resources fit that vision? How applicable are the policies
and practices we go by today? How sustainable is the lifestyle we’ve
always considered ours by something akin to a divine right? Or do we
think that when people by the thousands in Burma and Somalia want to
carve into our resource pie, we can just tell them "no" and
expect them to go back to "status quo ante Internet"? More
likely it is we who will have to change, perhaps by placing the best
of our technologies on the sustainable side rather than the consumptive
side of the resource equation.
It makes
little difference in the short term whether the rationale for requiring
the addition of ethanol to gasoline is as a replacement for MTBE or
to inject "renewables content" into fuel. But in terms of
an overall policy, it makes more sense to favor the latter because of
its more obvious connection with the issue of sustainability. Likewise,
in the short run we should applaud the use of agricultural feedstocks
as the main ingredient in the production of synfuels, for their ability
both to jump-start the commercialization process, and to provide a sorely
needed boost in the farm economy. But in the long run it’s important
to recognize two important points: (1) making fuel might not always
be the highest and best use of valuable cropland, and (2) it someday
might be necessary to apply increasingly precious water resources to
more pressing demands. Either of these could present us with a sustainability
dilemma from which there might be no easy escape. No such caveats apply
to waste.
The Case
for Waste
The municipal
wastestream is composed of approximately 60% organic content, half of
which—principally paper and cardboard—can be recycled. The remaining
one-third is most likely destined for the landfill. Even though the
technologies exist to transform our organic wastes into ethanol and
other products, investment in their commercialization depends on definable
and verifiable markets. It now appears that while such markets are about
to open up and the required organic-waste feedstocks most certainly
exist, in the short term there are insufficient waste-fed facilities
on-line or being planned to meet more than a small percent of the potential
demand.
You’d think
that the process for developing the infrastructure to transform a significant
portion of our wastestream into ethanol or other salable commodities
would be fairly straightforward, but it isn’t. You might expect resistance
on the part of petrochemical and even farm interests, but strange to
say, the first hurdle comes from certain environmental groups that fear
the challenge to the traditional waste-diversion modes of recycling
and composting. The basis for this opposition seems to lie in the fear
that acceptance of any transformation technology—a classification that
lumps together incineration with such nonburn processes as pyrolysis,
gasification, and hydrolysis—will open the door to waste incineration.
It’s one thing to battle against waste-burning initiatives, but to oppose
progress because it doesn’t fit the letter of EPA’s 10-year-old and
increasingly institutionalized waste management hierarchy is not in
the public’s best interest. Instead, it’s important that all pertinent
tax, waste diversion, and emissions-avoidance credits be extended to
waste transformation as well as landfill-gas-to-energy in order to turn
what is at present an enormous and costly liability into an environmental
and economic asset.
Last year’s
Editor’s Comments concluded: Permitting the energy content of waste
to go for naught is not only economically wasteful, it is an environmental
affront. The increasing cost of petroleum extraction along with the
ever-present specter of its embargo make fuel and energy generation
from waste attractive options. Now with the almost-certain restriction
on the use of MTBE as a component of automotive fuel, we might be facing
just the kind of opportunity that’s needed to jump-start the introduction
of a new product for waste managers to market.
MSW
May / June, 2000
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