An American produces

UTAH’S WTE FACILITY

4lbs of trash every day
Half of the Municipal Solid Waste Fall 2018 Utah will be opening it’s Waste to
(MSW) produced ends up in the first WTE facility that will convert
landfill food waste into biofuel and Energy and
fertilizers using anaerobic digesters
254 million tons in 2013
It will create enough energy to Recycling
power a small city – 40,000 people
Lexi Beckstead
40% of food gets thrown
away, taking up about 1/3
of the landfill

Landfills are the U.S.’s highest

emitter of methane. Methane
is a greenhouse gas 72x
more potent than Co2
Landfills also produce toxic
leachate that leaks into the
ground, contaminating the water
 Recycling
The U.S. has low
recycling rates – 24%
Paper, plastic, metal, glass,
food scraps can all be
recycled
Paper products and food
scraps take up almost half of
landfill space
Recycling leaves about 25%
of residual waste from the
garbage
SWEDISH RECYCLING REVOLUTION
Sweden recycles 50% of their
waste, incinerates 49%, and
sends less than 1% into the
landfills
WTEs reduce garbage by 90%
and have far less pollution than
landfills
In one city, 40% of homes get
energy from WTEs
3 million tons of trash create
the same amount of energy as
1 million tons of fuel when
incinerated
ed
Waste to Energy
WTEs are facilities that
turn trash into energy
by incineration
Co2 levels are at a high 400
parts per million – higher
than they’ve been in 600,000
years
WTEs have a 10% trash residue
in the form of ash that is
nontoxic and can be reused
Every ton of garbage
processed in a WTE facility
prevents an equivalent one
ton of Co2 from being
released into the atmosphere