The city of Baltimore has one of the best waste management systems in the U.S. (recycling, composting, waste to energy) but the newly elected city officials took the misguided step to push the city back to the 20th century, when landfilling was supreme. Thankfully, the district court struck down their ridiculous ordinance. Please click the link for the details. [...]

Those of you who have not seen the film "Plastic Wars" (PBS Frontline, March 31, 2020; link below), please do: In a nutshell: Only some of the urban paper  is worth recycling. The rest of the so-called recyclables should be left in the MSW going to WTEs where the contained metals are recovered as scrap metals. If the billions of dollars wasted annually in [...]

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Gasification Growing in Waste Processing" (2020/02/07/the-future-of-waste-to-energy-technology.html). Please see the attached link to an interview with me by Katerina Ploumidaki, published in Ethnikos Kirikas (National Herald) of the US/UK last June. Hello K., further to our earlier correspondence, I finally found more tangible information on Sierra Energy and other Gasification processes in the CNBC documentary. It is well done and mentions three processes that have spent , in [...]

Question: Dr. Themelis, Thank you very much for passing this along. The thesis seems to be comparing the health and environmental effects of WTE as compared to landfilling, in which it is determined to be less harmful. However, most of the experts I talk to who are against WTE are in favor of a "zero waste" system that integrates reduction, reuse and recycling as well [...]

Municipal (MSW) and other solid wastes contain carbon and hydrogen which, when reacted with oxygen. produce heat. This can be done 1) by controlled combustion of the wastes and using the heat of combustion for generating electricity or for heating. 2) By gasification, whereby partial combustion plus external heating (electricity or fossil fuel) are used to produce a "syngas", consisting of carbon monoxide and hydrogen plus [...]

WtERT-Chile (http://www.wtert.cl) contributed to the report  Rojas M., P. Aldunce, L. Farías, H. González, P. Marquet, J. C. Muñoz, R. Palma-Behnke, A. Stehr y S. Vicuña (editores) (2019). Evidencia científica y cambio climático en Chile: Resumen para tomadores de decisiones. Santiago: Comité Científico COP25; Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología, Conocimiento e Innovación. http://www.minciencia.gob.cl/sites/default/files/tmp/resumen_mesas_23.pdf . This report was submitted by a large group of Chilean scientists to Chile's Ministry of Science & Technology at COP25. Prof. [...]