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Can a Dirty Diaper Fuel Your Car?
Dec 29 2008 by Courtney Messenbaugh
With two children in diapers, I have a lot of landfill guilt. I’m too busy and grossed out — or perhaps just not feeling guilty enough — to use cloth diapers. Please don’t look down your nose at me for this. I know they’ve improved since the olden days, etc., etc., I just don’t use them, OK?
Of course, that means I go through my fair share of Pampers, and my landfill-filling diaper footprint isn’t what I’d like it to be. That weighs on me.
Much to my jolly green pleasure, however, there is technology out there capable of converting garbage into ethanol, called cellulosic ethanol. This is exciting on so many levels. To begin with, it could steer us away from commodity-based ethanol (think corn), which has been controversial at best, and it could dramatically reduce the amount of garbage wasting away in landfills. It also may increase the recovery of recyclables from landfill waste and could help reduce landfills’ greenhouse-gas emissions. As a bonus, it most definitely would help assuage my own personal guilt from all the diapers I toss into the trash on a daily basis. It’s like a dream come true!
One company working on this process is CleanTech Biofuels, based in St. Louis. CleanTech uses heat, steam and some good old-fashioned agitation (a technique used by my 2-year-old on a daily basis) to reduce solid waste into a compost-like material that apparently has a very high cellulose content. Bulky things like refrigerators and furniture are removed from a landfill before the process is begun, but other municipal solid waste can be used in the CleanTech process. I’m quite sure my diaper waste alone could fuel my car for a long time using this process!
Think about it: Making ethanol out of garbage means having an alternative fuel source that won’t be plagued by roller-coaster commodity prices, like other ethanol sources are, and this process means it could be locally produced. It could be just what this new energy economy needs to get going.
You can learn more about CleanTech at www.cleantechbiofuels.net.
