This week on Possibly we’re talking about landfills, the methane they create, and why some landfills are capturing it and using it as a source of energy.
Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
When you throw something in the trash you probably imagine it gets picked up by a garbage truck and taken to a landfill–end of story. But that’s just the beginning. Today, we’re talking about the gas that comes off of landfills and whether we should be using it as a source of energy.
Megan Hall: We had Iman Khanbhai from our Possibly team help Charlie Adams look into this question.
Iman Khanbhai: Hello!
Charlie Adams: Hey Megan!
Megan Hall: When I hear “landfill gas”, the smell that comes to mind doesn’t get me too excited.
Charlie Adams: Fair enough–we all know trash stinks. But it’s worse than just the smell. Landfills also release greenhouse gasses like methane and carbon dioxide that warm up the planet.
Megan Hall: How does a pile of trash create greenhouse gasses?
Iman Khanbhai: Landfills are full of organic waste like food scraps and paper products. Microbes chew these up and decompose them. This process consumes oxygen and produces carbon dioxide.
Charlie Adams: But once this waste gets buried, and all the oxygen is consumed, the decomposing trash produces methane instead of carbon dioxide.
Iman Khanbhai: And methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, meaning it traps heat much more effectively.
Megan Hall: How much methane are US landfills releasing?
Charlie Adams: That’s equal to about twenty three million Americans driving gas powered cars all year.
Iman Khanbhai: That makes landfills the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions in the United States.
Megan Hall: Is anyone doing anything about this?
Charlie Adams: There are regulations that require some really big landfills to collect the gas, but their systems for catching it aren’t perfect and emissions still escape.
Megan Hall: How do they capture it?
Iman Khanbhai: Basically, they put a giant sheet over the landfill and stick a tube into the trash pile to suck up the gas instead of having it leak into the atmosphere.
Megan Hall: What happens to all that gas once it’s collected?
Charlie Adams: Typically it gets processed and treated. Then there are a few options. It can either be flared or used as “landfill gas”.
Megan Hall: Which means?
Iman Khanbhai: Flaring means the methane is burned which turns it into carbon dioxide. It’s still a greenhouse gas but a much less harmful one. So, even flaring is much better than nothing.
Charlie Adams: But, instead of just flaring it, the methane can also be burned on site to produce electricity that can power the landfill’s operations.
Iman Khanbhai: Or the landfill gas, which is a mix of a bunch of different gasses, can be cleaned and injected into a gas pipeline for use elsewhere.
Megan Hall: Got it. So can we count landfill gas as a renewable or clean energy source?
Charlie Adams: To answer that, here’s Stephen Porder- our founder and the Provost of sustainability at Brown University.
Stephen Porder It’s not really renewable because it is not infinitely abundant. It depends on you filling the landfill up with stuff. It’s cleaner than letting it leak to the atmosphere. So what I would say is, it’s making the best of a bad situation.
Iman Khanbhai: Stephen says the best solution is to stop wasting food and start composting it, but landfills are already emitting a ton of methane right now, no matter what we do in the future.
Charlie Adams: Because of that, it’s much better to capture and burn methane so it releases as carbon dioxide instead.
Iman Khanbhai: It’s even better if that burning produces electricity instead of fossil fuels.
Stephen Porder: It’s not a free lunch, but it’s a free snack.
Charlie Adams: Stephen says, if we didn’t capture and use the methane from landfills, it would still be leaking into the atmosphere in a much more powerful form, so why not do it?
Megan Hall: Got it. Thanks Charlie and Iman.
That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or X at “askpossibly”
Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative
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