Scanning the local paper during a recent visit to Charleston, S.C., I came upon an article about how Berkeley County is progressing on its plans to sell the methane gas that is produced at the landfill there. According to the Post and Courier, “Officials are negotiating two contracts that could bring the county $1 million a year or more from the landfill’s methane gas, a byproduct of the decomposition of garbage.” Santee Cooper, the state-owned local utility, is interested in purchasing the methane to burn for electricity. Another company is bidding on the project in order to possibly sell the carbon credits that would be generated by capturing the methane.

With a price tag of $2.8 million, the methane gas collection system the county is installing would pay for itself in just under three years at the expected contract price of $1 million per year.

“More than 50 wells were dug through the trash this summer to release the methane. Now workers are laying pipes to a station that will suck up the gas. The system is expected to be finished by November. The system [is expected] to pump 750 standard cubic feet a minute, which is the thermal equivalent of 3.1 million gallons of gasoline a year.”

In our fast-paced, modern, throw-away society, we have been able to neglect conservation and recycling simply because the resources were abundant, prices low, and ill-effects unnoticeable. As resources dwindle, prices increase, and the side-effects of our current ways noticeably affect more people, what was taken for granted gets re-evaluated. There is so much waste in our current systems that many gains can be had by simply using by-products of our current wasteful practices. While the ultimate goal is to introduce and adopt sustainable behaviors, an intermediate step can be doing something like collecting methane from landfills to sell. When we sit down and think about our current systems, it becomes apparent how much “trash” can be turned into “treasure”.

- Justin Manger

[Picture credit (pipe used to take methane gas from landfill)]