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Every year Americans throw away 250 million tons of rubbish. New York
alone generates almost 10 million tons a year. It has been estimated
that America's garbage could provide as much energy as 100 million
tons of coal. Unfortunately, most of it is buried and never used.
Recycling garbage can produce electricity, saving millions of tons of
coal. Rubbish can also be burned by factories instead of coal or oil,
but it must be treated first.
For our purposes, rubbish dumped in the ground could be used as a
source of fuel. As garbage begins to rot, it produces methane gas,
which is the same as the natural gas found in pockets under the
earth's crust. Each ton of refuse can produce up to 14,000 cubic feet
(or 400 cubic meters) of methane. Left alone, the gas will find its
way to the surface and escape, sometimes causing explosions. But it
can be tapped very cheaply and used to generate heat or electricity.
Some plants use the gas on site to generate electricity by burning it
in simple gas engines. This allows all the gas to be used, rather
than trying to match output to the fluctuating demands of a factory.
In the future, gas production in rubbish may be used to fuel our
automobiles as an oil substitute.
We should also be interested in metal waste, which could be sorted
out and reused after processing for car parts.
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