Turning Waste into Renewable Energy

This week's trip to the Lee County Waste to Energy Facility was not my first. I had been to the facility before as a field trip when I was in middle school. Going into this trip I thought I basically understood what the facility entailed, but my memories of my earlier, like other memories, were incomplete or incorrect. From the get go I had questions involving the environmental impact of burning waste, in my head it seemed like it would be impossible to maintain a clean way of burning trash that would not hurt the environment. I was wrong, however, because I learned that the way in which they clean their emissions involved a laborious process of cleaning through specialized filters and that their emissions were even much cleaner than the government implemented EPA emissions standards. In addition, my understanding was that the facility did two things, burn waste and process recycling. However, I learned that they do much more including composting and processing electronic and hazardous waste. In addition, I did not realize how much of an impact tires had in terms of waste or recycling. I now understand how difficult they are to dispose of or reuse and that the Lee County facility is able to process a large amount of tires in a clean way while also creating a renewable energy resource. Knowing what I know now I think more of these types of facilities should be implemented across the U.S. as a way to provide renewable energy as well as to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts caused by other methods of waste disposal such as landfills.