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The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather: > Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition.
Wouldn’t composting have the same issue as tossing it in the dump though?
The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather: > Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition.
Wouldn’t composting have the same issue as tossing it in the dump though?
The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather: > Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Landfills are actually better, in that in many cases commercial operators can recover the gas and turn it into renewable fuel.
There are now a few startups trying to make home/DIY anaerobic digesters that you can collect the gas from. Would be interesting for e.g. keeping a greenhouse warm year-round without the electricity spend. For example (I have no idea how competent the product is): https://www.homebiogas.com/Products/HomeBiogas2
544 sites account for 46% of the state's emissions.
Yet the article states, "A handful of operations are responsible for the vast majority of methane emissions."
Some very smart friends of mine do this with airplanes to find leaks in natural gas plants and pipelines: http://kairosaerospace.com/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition. Uhhh, I think you may want to rethink that. Rotting things, whether in a landfill or in your ecologically principled compost heap in your back yard releases methane.
Methane is produced by anaerobic decomposition; composting is defined by the regular aeration (and sometimes watering) of the compost pile, which allows aerobic bacteria to break down the pile more cleanly. You do still get some GHGs, but much less. See: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/climate-change/composting-avoid-... https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/compost/compost.htm
It boggles me that people emotionally or tribally react to a fact about how chemistry works, google things which support their emotional reaction, and ... don't read what was in their citation.
272,000 sites surveyed. 0.2% of the sites account for 46% of emissions. 272,000 sites * 0.002 = 544 sites. 544 sites account for 46% of the state's emissions. Yet the article states, "A handful of operations are responsible for the vast majority of methane emissions."
So what can be done about landfills? Burying stuff seems expensive/energy intensive.
It also takes care of the plastic problem, since it burns the plastic very cleanly.