I read this great Popular Science article last week about an ingenious way of disposing of garbage. A guy has developed, over the course of many years, a process called plasma gasification, which turns anything, and I mean anything except nuclear waste, into two things: a gas called syngas (mostly hydrogen and carbon monoxide), and a black glass-like material that is used in bathroom tiles and asphalt. The coolest thing is that once the process starts it can produce enough energy with the syngas to run itself and still put electricity back onto the grid. It can also consume up to 2,000 tons of waste every day. I've always said that we should ship our trash to the sun; it looks like this is much more economical.

Labels: Technology