Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Turning your kitchen scraps into clean energy
Earlier this month, I toured a Waste Management landfill in Simi Valley, California as part of our series on how companies are turning household garbage and other waste into clean electricity. For our full coverage, click here.
The landfill, which is about 40 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, surprised me at first because it didn’t smell and the 300 feet of trash was covered in dirt and grass. It looked just like an ordinary hillside.
On one side of the mound, however, trash from all over Ventura County was being flattened and buried into the ground, where the methane gas it produces will be collected and produced into energy to power 2,500 homes. This prevents the methane, which is 21 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide, from entering the atmosphere.
In this video, Waste Management spokeswoman Kit Cole explains the process of burying household trash in the landfill to turn it into electricity:
