Waste Management and InEnTec have floated the idea of turning Portland's trash into something useful.
Unfortunately, they aren't talking about Portland's pervy mayor Sham Adams nor the rest of Portland City Council. No, they're talking about building a plasma unit to convert garbage to gas, thus converting landfill waste into a profit center. Naturally, critics such as the ever-negative "Physicians for Social Responsibility" (a very thinly-veiled activist group for every cause from animal "rights" to carbon-trading schemes) are already up in arms; claiming that such a plant would, among other things, "undermine waste-reduction and recycling efforts".
Such an outcome is hardly likely, given the extensive recycling and reduction programs already in place - more likely, such a plant would function to convert hard-to-recycle products into useful materials that can be sold at a small profit. PSR gripes about everything that doesn't involve de-industrialization.
Recycling is fine and dandy, but we still need landfill alternatives.
We're running way low on places to stick landfills, anyhow. Energy is matter and matter is energy, and it makes little sense to stuff manufactured matter into landfills and wait for it to slowly decompose into energy when we can convert it in the space of a second back into both energy and usable matter.
It's also worth noting that Hawaii is preparing to start sending their garbage to Oregon. Hawaii is loaded with invasive species. I think it'll be safer all around to run it through a plasma plant than to bury it.
