The War on Trash

The Army is preparing to test a new technology that turns garbage into energy, according to the Associated Press. The two $1 million, four-ton biomass refineries can produce enough power to light a small army, err, village, and run for 20 hours on a ton of trash. Designed to reduce the military’s dependency on diesel fuel and subsequently limit the number of dangerous fuel runs convoys must make, the refineries run on only ten percent of the energy they create. Trash is fed into a chute and sent into a grinder that chews it up into tiny bits. Food waste is separated and turned into ethanol, and the remaining trash is heated into methane or propane. The twin refineries—beginning a six-month test in early May—could save 115 gallons of fuel a day, a small dent in the military's 1.29 million gallon per day consumption. But if successful, a whole fleet of these first-of-their-kind refineries could be shipped out, and developers suggest any number of businesses looking to reduce their fuel consumption might consider their trash-to-treasure alternative. Check out Outside’s technology forecast of the future in our first-ever Green Issue—on newsstands now.