Turning Garbage Into Gas - Whitfield County Making Methane

Officials in Whitfield County Georgia are among the first in the country to tap the virtually unlimited supply of methane gas coming from landfills.

There's never an end to the trash we throw away everyday. Trash that's buried in our landfills. Trash that decomposes and produces huge amounts of methane gas that pollutes our atmosphere.

Now the Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority will tap the gas and sell it to one of the area's biggest manufactures, Dow Chemical.

Tim Thomas, Dow's Dalton Site Leader, said "certainly we're viewing it as an opportunity for Dow to use a renewable energy source and will limit our need for fossil fuel usage."

Thomas said the landfill gas will replace about 90% of the natural gas they now buy and burn to help make latex that's used in the local carpet industry.

The solid waste authority is picking up the tab for building 60 landfill gas wells and a two-mile-long pipeline to Dow.

The authority will charge Dow for the gas but at a rate much less than what they pay for natural gas.

"Hopefully we've structured the sales to Dow for this landfill gas so that we're able to repay those funds and have our own system completely paid for in the future," according to Norman Barashick who's the executive director of the Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority.

Their landfill has several mountains of garbage that are now capped and covered with dirt. And if you think about it all the things that are underneath - household garbage, baby diapers, hygiene products, last week's meatloaf, whatever - are all rotting underground. And that is producing a tremendous amount of methane gas.

"Typically landfill gas is produced for 20 years after you close your landfill," Barashick said.

Whitfield County's landfill is still open so the supply of garbage for gas keeps growing.

The pipelines that will move the gas off site from the wells will be finished in the coming months. Dow expects to burn the gas next summer.

Tapping landfill gas has big environmental advantages. For one, it won't just drift into our atmosphere like it does now in many landfills. Scientists say methane is one of the most destructive greenhouse gases.

The federal EPA estimates the benefits of this size project are equivalent to removing the emissions from 17,000 vehicles a year. Or planting 24,000 acres of trees. Or not using 200,000 barrels of oil a year.

Benefits from just one landfill turning garbage into gas.