A聽steady line of steam rises up over the hill just above dozens of brick townhouses and suburban homes. The yards are picturesque, with bright green grass, and some residents enjoy the hot, summer day to walk through the rolling hills of their neighborhood. Few would notice the steam, but those who did weren鈥檛 too concerned. This northern Virginia neighborhood sits just around the corner from an energy recovery facility in the town of Lorton鈥娾�斺�妀ust 20 minutes south of Washington D.C. They burn a city鈥檚 worth of trash in Lorton, and use it to make electricity.
The town of over 18,000 is where D.C. sends around 43 percent of the waste the city manages. Another 49 percent is sent to landfills, 7 percent is recycled, and 1 percent is composted. The I-95 Energy Resource Recovery Facility is privately owned by Covanta Fairfax. Inc., a subsidiary of Covanta Energy. Covanta鈥檚 facility burns around 3,000 tons per day on its 23-acre site with trash coming in from Fairfax County and Washington D.C. and produces enough energy to power over 80,000 homes鈥娾�斺�奻ar more than the number of homes in Lorton. The facilities are alternately known as waste-to-energy, incinerators, or energy from waste (EfW).
While around half of the trash in the United States is still sent to be buried in landfills, EfW facilities in recent years have found new ways to meet pollution controls, recycle metals, and reduce waste volume鈥娾�斺�奲ut not without financial and potential health costs to the cities where they鈥檙e located. Landfills are also no friend to the environment due to various pollutants, such as methane emissions, which are caused by buried organic material rotting. Methane is a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a 20 year time frame, so this is particularly important for climate change. But now more than ever before, cities have a responsibility to solve the underlying issue: reducing the waste before it ever gets tossed in a bin.
A recent report from Save on Energy called 鈥淟and of Waste鈥� found that Americans throw away 4.4 pounds of trash per day. Around half of the 254 million tons of waste the United States produces is sent to one of the 2,000 active landfills across the country. The rest of the waste is either recycled, composted, or incinerated鈥娾�斺�奷epending where it鈥檚 thrown out and if the waste is managed by a private company or the government. Around 15 percent of household garbage is incinerated.
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