Terrain mag calls composting ‘up and coming’ industry
June 3, 2010 by scasola
Filed under Projects, composting, renewable energy
The Spring 2010 issue of Terrain magazine features an interesting and informative piece called Compost Confidential, which details the promising growth of composting as an industry, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
Writer Amy Kiser considers composting an up and coming industry, one that “follows on the heels of recycling as an environmentally and economically preferable municipal waste option.”
To prove her point, Kiser illustrates the way corporate waste companies, like Waste Management, Inc., have begun to embrace the power of composting.
The article reads: “This January, Texas-based garbage giant Waste Management, Inc. announced that it will “expand organics recycling facilities across the US and Canada” by investing in Harvest Power, the largest food and yard waste composting facility in North America.”
The Terrain story details the ways in which organic waste continues to be diverted from its original path, straight into a landfill, toward processes like anaerobic digestion, which has the power to transform it into renewable energy.
As Kiser writes: “In the last fifteen years, the development of anaerobic digesters in Europe has exploded, spurred by the European Union Landfill Directive of 1999 that required member states to stabilize organic material prior to land-filling. If the US were to follow suit, in the pursuit of minimizing methane from landfills and maximizing energy production from renewable resources, anaerobic digesters could indeed be the next big thing. Waste Management is betting on it.”
Read the full article at EcologyCenter.org.
What do you envision will be the future of the composting industry? Do you agree that anaerobic digestion, as a technology, has the power to become “the next big thing?” We’d like to hear your thoughts.