Waste Management wants your waste for more reasons that you might think.
The company, which hauls garbage from 22 million customers, is in the midst of a strategy to invest in technology start-ups in an effort to get electricity, chemicals, or liquid fuels from municipal solid waste. Already, the company generates two to three times more energy than the entire solar industry.
“We took the venture capital route. We make lots of small investments because you don’t know what technology will ultimately will win. We need to spread out bets,” Waste Management CEO David Steiner said during a talk here at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference today.
Landfill operators, such as Waste Management, have been capturing the methane gas from landfills to make electricity for decades. Incinerators burn trash to make electricity.
But Waste Management is seeking to get more value from the “materials” that it collects, said Steiner. Rather than create a single product, such as electricity, the company’s strategy is to invest in different technologies that give it flexibility in what collected waste is converted into.
With organic materials, such as yard clippings and food waste, the industry is only getting about 60 percent of the inherent value. Organics can be converted into biogas using a process called anaerobic digestion, which can be burned for heat or electricity. Nutrients can be recuperated as well from organics.
Another technology called plasma gasification converts wastes into a synthetic gas, a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. From there, that gas could potentially be made into diesel fuel or specialty chemicals, Steiner said.
Source: cnet news
By Martin LaMonica