Garbage Power

Every day, every American throws away an average of nearly six pounds of trash. Most goes to dumps and landfill projects, which gobble up land, or to incinerators, which can pollute the air. But now refuse is being reappraised as a possible Cinderella fuel. Cheap and almost limitless, as municipalities know only too well, it consists mainly of paper, plastic and organic matter that when burned, releases about 50% of the heat value of coal.

Experimental facilities to tap garbage power are being planned from Milwaukee to Miami to Saugus, Mass. In Nashville, Tenn., steam created by burning refuse is used to heat and air condition downtown office buildings. In Denver Adolph Coors Co. will likely soon be firing its brewery's boilers with the city's trash. But all of these efforts are relatively minor compared with the one decided on by St. Louis' Union Electric Co. after a 23-month test with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the city.

The big, privately owned electric utility has just announced that it will take all of the six-county metropolitan area's solid wastes--some 8,000 tons a day--and burn them in its power plants in the ratio of one part trash to nine parts coal. By 1977 Union Electric will build several collection yards where the refuse will be transferred from private or municipal trucks to rail cars. At the power plants, recyclable materials (iron, steel, aluminum and glass) will be removed and the rest of the wastes burned. Antipollution devices will trap and treat soot and gases in the smokestacks.

Capital equipment for the project will cost $70 million, and operating costs are estimated at $11 million a year. But the investment looks promising. The utility will not only save on its fuel bill and earn money from selling recoverable materials; it will also charge local governments a "dumping" fee for disposing of their refuse. If U.S. utilities follow Union's lead, the nation could conceivably conserve the equivalent of 290 million bbl. of oil per year, recover up to $1 billion worth of recyclable metals and, best of all, gain a final solution to the garbage-disposal problem.

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