After ending its curbside recycling program due to budgetary constraints, the city of Montgomery is working diligently to find new ways to save money and run a cleaner, “greener” community. One of the ideas being considered to meet this goal, mentioned by Mayor Todd Strange in his January “state of the city” speech, uses plasma gasification technology to recycle the city’s garbage.
Converting Solid Waste into Energy
Chris Conway, the city’s director of public works, explained, “The plasma recycling option will take a large percentage of Montgomery’s municipal solid waste and convert it to energy.” According to Conway, this method would consume waste at a rate of nearly 100 percent, leaving behind only beneficial by-products such as energy and marketable materials like metals and mineral wool.
The city would partner with a private company called Plasma Waste Recycling to implement this recycling initiative. “The company will build the plant, and the city of Montgomery will deliver the city’s waste to the plant,” Conway said.
Montgomery in the Forefront
This cutting-edge technology is currently the most appealing solution, thanks to its efficiency and potential savings. Montgomery would be one of the first cities to use it, putting the capital city on the forefront of environmentally friendly municipal waste disposal. “It will result in the largest percentage of waste diversion and the largest savings to the city’s budget,” Conway said. “Since 100 percent of the waste diverted is consumed in the process, the landfill life will be extended, and citizens will not need to separate recyclable materials from the waste stream. The city would be able to reduce its budget for landfill operations, jobs would be created in a new industry, and Montgomery could become a showcase for the technology to the world.” According to Michael Briddell with the mayor’s office, the savings could be as high as $2 million a year.
Before any decision is made, however, the city will review the results of a feasibility study that is already underway and should be completed in the next few months.
Making it Work for Montgomery
Implementing a “mega-MRF” is another option being investigated and would call for a larger version of a process being used now. “MRF stands for Material Recycling Facility, and The Hannan Center, which the city currently uses, is a small MRF that’s just not capable of handling the tremendous volume of Montgomery County even when recyclables are somewhat separated by the citizens beforehand as they were with the old orange bag curbside program,” said Conway. “A new MRF will work like any other facility where the raw recyclable materials are extracted from the waste stream and separated for sale to companies who recycle them. The ‘mega’ part means the MRF would be built to accommodate a much larger volume of waste, allowing citizens to continue to not have to separate recyclable from non-recyclable.”
A mega-MRF would also result in some budget savings and would create jobs. However, this option would only extract about 30 to 50 percent from the waste stream and create no valuable by-products, making it less attractive than the plasma method. “But if at any point feasibility for the plasma option says it won’t work, we will move in the direction of the ‘mega-MRF,’” Conway said.
