Anaerobic digestion

We rarely think about what happens to our garbage after it goes into the nearest waste receptacle. Whether it’s a piece of paper, a worn-out pair of flip flops, or leftovers from the back of your refrigerator, trash usually ends up at the same final destination: a landfill. Landfills are home to wild chemistry that can lead to different types of pollution. They’re also sites for clever engineering that seeks to mitigate that pollution.He Tossed His Bitcoin, Now He Wants It BackWhile the essence of a landfill is a pit full…

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.Wastewater treatment plants are typically overlooked when it comes to reducing greenhouse gasses, but new research from Princeton University reveals the plants emit twice as much methane as previously thought.Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas and the treatment plants should be part of any plan to reduce emissions, according to the study released last week.“Wastewater treatment…

The CH4 website as it appeared in 2019, via the Wayback Machine.Screenshot: GizmodoStop me if you’ve heard this one before: A guy embezzled nearly $9 million by convincing investors he was turning cow poop into green energy—and then not building any of the machines at all.On Monday, 66-year-old Raymond Brewer of Porterville, California pled guilty to charges that he’d defrauded investors. Court records show that Brewer stole$8,750,000 from investors between 2014 and 2019 with promises to build anaerobic digesters, or…

Compostable plastic that has not fully disintegrated in a compost bin. Photo: Citizen scientist image from www.bigcompostexperiment.org.ukSeemingly every corner of our world is now littered with plastics, and only a tiny percentage of it is ever recycled. To mitigate this, many companies are offering items labeled as “compostable” or “biodegradable” plastic—but as new research finds, those may be a misnomers. 01:25Randall Park's Favorite SuperheroesMonday 5:02PMA study published this week in Frontiers in Sustainability by…

It seems like magic: In millions of operations scattered around the globe (some big, some very small), waste is transformed into energy. Landfilled garbage, sewage, and farm effluent are processed into burnable biogas, which can be used as a substitute for natural gas, a fossil fuel. Unlike natural gas,which sits in limited supply deep underground, biogas is considered a renewable source of energy. As long as humans continue to poop and make trash, there can be more biogas. But, though it’s been hailed as an…

Cows on a farm in in Pretty Prairie, Kansas.Photo: Alice Mannette/The Hutchinson News (AP)Hightemperatures in Kansas last weekend killed thousands of cattle, authorities confirmed this week, after footage of rows of cattle corpses was widely shared online.A spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment told multiple media outlets that the agency had gotten reports of at least 2,000 cattle deaths that happened over the weekend of June 11-12 in the southwestern part of the state. The agency said that the…