Imagine you were hired by some fiendish, mad, corporate devil (aren’t the bad guys always corporate devils?) to devise a plan to pervert the army of earth loving, sensitive hearted and always sustainability conscious angels (aren’t eco-warriors and warriorettes always angelic?), causing them to become, unknowingly, foul polluters of the very environment they purport to love.
You’re given one hour to hatch your dastardly plot.
“Oh, drat! No fair!” you shout after considering the conundrum for all of ten seconds. “I can’t take your money! A plan like that is already in place and working magnificently. Governments across North America have already accomplished the task and revel in its success. Nearly every sizable town in the country has already perverted the environmental movement, enlisting the boys and girls in creating and sustaining green house gas factories dedicated to pumping their major product, carbon dioxide and methane, directly into the atmosphere.
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| Processed yard waste ready to haul to the green house gas production facility |
In my town they call it “Clean Green.” In your town they may call it something else.
In the world of science the greenhouse gas factory is called “composting.”
Clean Green, and other, similar programs in my town and, probably, in yours, is based on collecting a variety of organic materials and composting them, either in commercial facilities or, even more subtle and effective in terms of creating and releasing prodigious quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, in home composting efforts.
Composting is a pretty straightforward process taking place every day in the natural world. Organic material is collected and encouraged to rot or, alternatively, be digested. As the material rots or is digested, the carbon it contains is emitted in the form of a number of greenhouse gasses including carbon dioxide, methane and others. The mix of gasses is largely determined by the nature of the process; aerobic or anaerobic.
There are important differences between the two.
It might be a little simplistic but, is helpful in understanding the important parameters of the issue to equate aerobic composting, composting requiring adequate oxygen, to the rotting one sees when any dead organic is left lying about.
Anaerobic composting can be likened to digestion. Particular little critters break down the organics, mostly in the absence of much oxygen.
A well tended commercial operation based on aerobic composting, as most are, will be one in which the compost is turned regularly so as to provide for plenty of oxygen. The product is a soil amendment with some nutrients available to fuel new plant growth. Most of the off gasses from the process will emit to the atmosphere are in the form of carbon dioxide although contaminants part of the original “fuel” source (chemical applied to the foliage being ground and composted as well as other compounds) will also off gas.
A commercial composting operation will emit, over the course of a year, huge volumes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Poorly tended composters, sometimes commercial and nearly always the case in home composting operations, are more problematic.
When organics are piled up and left without proper turning to allow for the introduction of oxygen into the mix, anaerobic composting takes place.
When anaerobic composting is either chosen or, takes place as the result of neglect, large quantities of the carbon created as part of the composting process take the form of methane.
Natural gas, used by many in the world for heating, cooking, generating power and other necessities is primarily methane.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, “When released to the air, methane is a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide (another greenhouse gas). When burned, methane releases up to 25% less carbon dioxide than the combustion of the same mass of coal and does not emit the nitrogen and sulfur oxides known to damage the environment.”
Now, the beauty of anaerobic composting is that it can be accomplished inside sealed vessels in a facility created for the purpose. That means, if we really wanted to, as a matter of public policy, we could gather the organics we now process through our carbon production facilities (anaerobic composters) and use them to create methane which could then be piped into our natural gas pipelines. The savings in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and, more important, the long term effects, would be stupendous.
But then, that would actually be green wouldn’t it?
Other solutions also exist. Most woody waste can be incinerated with the resulting energy captured and utilized to create electricity. Biomass burning to create electricity is actually a greenhouse gas positive because it not only offsets fossil fuel use, it also results in the reduction of methane over composting.
If any phrase accurately describes the pop environmental movement it is, “Form over substance.” Looking good is far more important than getting it right.
If we really want to enhance our environment we really must focus more on “getting it right.”
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