We the Consumer… Trash and Our Green Future
My last article(s) dealt with batteries and their importance as a step towards a greener future. I ended the article with this paragraph: We the Consumer… And as the simple consumer of at the end of all this battery production and technological advancements… What can we do? We can recycle. We can promote recycling locally. We can insist on buying recycled materials, not just recycled battery and technology parts, but recycled glass, metals, fabrics, wood products. A Green Future is not just in energy production, but in better waste management as well. “After a century of heavy industrial activity, we also have a wealth of human waste products full of reclaimable elements: wastewater, discarded consumer electronics and even pollution in the atmosphere. Technologies that scientists are developing to clean up these wastes can literally turn trash into treasure. “If you’re going to remove it, why not recover it?”” The Question of Trash Management The question for this article deals with just how much trash we put out and are we making the most of waste management, specifically sorting and recycling… Because if there is a finite amount of metals to be mined for our batteries, it would be a safe guess that there is a finite amount of land space for our trash. How Much Trash? The amount of trash, or municipal solid waste, generated here in the United States in 2018, per person, was 2.58 kg/day… That’s 5.7 lbs/day for those of us not comfortable with metric. That would be the equivalent of throwing away your mother’s Yorkie each day. Or 3 gallons of milk. Or a 24” TV. Just trying to put this into perspective. Even if we go with the EPA 2018 number of 4.9 lbs per person, that still adds up 35 lbs per week, or 149 lbs of trash per month FROM ONE PERSON. If you live with someone, double that. If your live in a family of four, quadruple that. Now let’s make this a visual representation… Imagine, if you would, that the trash you generate in a month is an “adult”, or better yet, an adult sized mannequin. We’ll round this up to 150 lbs. Now imagine that you lived outside of town and had no trash service. You have a busy life, and you let your mannequins pile up. That would be 12 mannequins piled up against your house, or wherever you put your trash, in just a year’s time. That is 1800 lbs of trash. Almost one ton. Now add a family of four; that’s 7200 lbs. And this is just ONE family. I won’t extend this out, but I hope I am getting my point across. According to the EPA, in 2018 the United States generated 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste – trash. Where exactly does all that trash go? Where Does Our Trash Go? Over half of our trash goes to landfills. Land. Land that cannot be farmed. Land that is not in it’s natural state with the local flora and fauna, so it cannot be enjoyed by “getting outdoors” in a natural setting. Land that cannot have homes on it. Land. “Landfills are designed to store waste, but not to break it down. They are made up of layers lined with clay and covered in a flexible plastic skin. Drains and pipes crisscross each layer to collect the contaminated fluid created by garbage. As a layer fills, it is covered with another sheet of plastic and [finally] topped with soil and plants. Eventually, garbage will decompose in a landfill, but the process is slow in this oxygen-free environment.” So, landfills take up land space and are not “quick” in the decomposition of trash. When a landfill is “closed” and covered for the last time, the area is given time to stabilize and settle. “Upon stabilization, some landfill sites are used as parks, playgrounds, golf courses, or other facilities. Both John F. Kennedy and La Guardia Airports were built on landfills.” Please note the use of the word “some” landfills, not all. For any interested, the rules governing the environmentally safe maintenance, placement and closing of a landfill can be found here. Therefore landfills are not the best method of waste management due to slow rate of waste decomposition, land use and potential for environmental pollution from waste within the landfill. Recycle and Reuse What else do we do with our trash? “Roughly 35% of all solid waste goes to either a recycling or composting facility. The goal of both recycling and composting is to reuse waste by turning it into new products. Recycling facilities generally focus on processing aluminum, plastics, paper and glass, while composters use food and agricultural waste to create compost for municipal and consumer use.” Recycling While Traveling… From my own personal experience, there seems to be quite a bit of variance on recycling from state to state. I’ve recently been able to do a little traveling and in the last year or two, I have been across our great country. One thing stood out in my travels. Recycling, or the lack thereof. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest, recycling is big. You pay a recycle fee on bottles and cans to ensure that if you don’t recycle it, someone else will. I’m sure, if you look, you’ve seen those fees listed on your favorite drink and what states charge them. Where I was at, they even set up a neat system; where instead of a monetary exchange for your bag of recyclables, you were given a card/ID number that you could then use as cash at any participating store. Kind of easy. What I found as I traveled through the Midwest was that there was little to no recycling. My trash was dumped in a single can, no separation. Now some areas do have recycling, but even that seemed rather simplified consisting of a two can system with trash and recyclables. In the Pacific Northwest, I lived in an HOA where
Batteries in Our “Green” Future…
I began part one of this article by referring to the habit of putting batteries in my kids Christmas stockings for all the little things that need batteries in our lives. And I used this memory as a stepping off point to discuss the importance of batteries in our Green Future. But the holiday is over, and the New Year is here, literally. So now it’s time to face the music and take a hard look at our Green Future and why batteries take such a strong (and weak) position in this future. What did I call them? The “Achilles Heel” of our Green Future. A Generalized “Green Future” The need for a Green Future, which could be generally agreed as a future with: is becoming more and more apparent as a necessity. The global weather patterns have been changing dramatically over the last few years, the matter of waste management is apparent as we have “plastic islands” in the oceans, and the basic need for cleaner air and water for our communities health are all news-worthy examples of the need for a greener future. These are generalized statements I am comfortable making without reference. I will also add that I discussed a few of these ideas with some depth in my first article, Brother Bob’s 50 Year Apocalyptic Plan. But let’s stay on topic: how do batteries themselves play such an important role in our Green Future? Seeing as part one hit on the history of batteries and their construction needs, let’s get into some greener topics in this article. Batteries Have Lagged in Advancement Let’s keep in mind the technological advancements that we have made, in terms of electrical circuitry, have been HUGE since the creation of the first computers in the 1940’s, by the trillions in terms of computational speed. Contrast that change to the minute changes in the battery. A “Tesla lithium-ion battery stores only roughly six times as much charge, per pound, as a lead acid electric car battery of 1920.” This HUGE contrast in advancement is causing issues for our future technology. “Battery technology may be the keystone of the energy transition, facilitating the decarbonization of the transportation sector while providing a critical backstop for intermittent solar and wind generation in power generation. But the widely used lithium-ion battery may not be up to the task of carrying the future of the global green economy.” Why Batteries? WHY are batteries so important in a global “greener” economy? After all, electric cars are not “new”, having been around almost as long as the battery has, and the use of wind and water for energy sources has been around for millennia as windmills and dams. So, again, WHY are batteries so important for our greener future? The electricity we use in our homes, businesses and production facilities comes from a continuous source on our archaic power grid, see part one. Any and all of our electrical appliances require this steady supply of flowing electrons to “work”, whatever that work is. So, we need a power source to supply that. We discussed batteries previously as “small chemical reactors, with the reaction producing energetic electrons, ready to flow through the external device.” This is small scale. Standard Power Plants For large scale electricity supplies, we rely on standard power plants. Today’s power plants, which ironically also hail from the 1880’s, commonly use fossil fuel products to generate electricity, which can then power entire cities. Dat’s a’lotta electricity! There are other common sources for large scale power plants, such as hydroelectric and nuclear, but these are not “new” sources that are considered overly green. Dams have effects on the rivers and the surrounding environment, and nuclear has the nasty problem of radioactive waste once the rods are spent… And let’s not forget the possibility of a nuclear melt-down. Ask the Russians and Japanese about that. Oh yeah… Ask the Pennsylvanians as well. Green Power Plants? All of the power plants mentioned above can supply a steady source of electricity, depending on the demand. Can the “greener” solar and wind power provide large scale energy? We know about homes and businesses with solar panels and the random collection of large windmills spread across the country, but how about supplying for large cities? There’s a problem, though, with solar and wind as a continuous source of electricity… They’re not continuous. The sun shines for a maximum of 12 hours per day, location dependent, and the wind blows sporadically. Therefore, other power sources are needed OR you need a large enough battery to store power while your energy source is offline. In terms of large solar farms, electricity can be sent directly to the local power grid, thereby providing part of the energy mix for the local utility. But emphasis on “part”. The solar farm would provide nothing at night. Wind farms work the same basic way; the wind turbines generate the electricity when the conditions are right, which is then sent on to the power grid. Offshore Wind Farms Can! The only exception to the inconsistency of solar and wind farming is offshore wind farms. Because of the pressure differences between air masses over land vs sea, winds along the coastlines tend to be very consistent and can therefore provide consistent “greener” electricity. Battery Power or Power Plant? So it seems that we are back to the initial problem of needing a battery to store energy for our greener energy sources… Unless you live near a shoreline that can provide you with consistent wind energy, you will need some sort of power source for when the greener solar and wind supply is down. Ergo, you need a battery, or remain attached to the power grid. Are Batteries a “Green” Power Source? Since batteries seem to be required for the greener energy sources described above, and not just for our transportation, communication, toys, etc… Are the batteries themselves actually all that green? No, they’re not. As of right now, fossil fuels
