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This is super exciting. One of the grand challenges I've been thinking about is tackling waste. Why is any material considered waste? The first principles appro

This is super exciting. One of the grand challenges I've been thinking about is tackling waste. Why is any material considered waste? The first principles approach to this problem says that landfills are mountains of energy and diverse resources waiting to be tapped. The first step though is to ignore the pervailing reclamation, recycling mentality at the macro level and begin the gruelling work of building a new ecology. We're at a point now where concerted effort into engineered (or found through directed evolution) organisms gives us the opportunity to break down and then re-integrate these dormant resources. In the future a 'recycling' plant will accept any and all waste and be the front end of a manufacturing hub that outputs both new raw materials and finished products. In between the two ends it will be biotechnology that enables the transition from waste back to usable component resources.

wool_gather 8y ago
> landfills are mountains of energy If you're talking about literally turning garbage into fuel, there's, as I understand it, very rapidly diminishing returns unfortunately. Even the apparently simple act of just burning garbage to generate electricity is complex, because you have to be concerned about what the heck is in there and what you're releasing into the air.
- CptFribble 8y ago
  In principle, plasma gasification can be made to work net positive energy output, plus slag for whatever you want to use slag for. In practice, it's really expensive to set up and operate without a lot of throughput, so it doesn't happen that much. Though, I've read the US Navy is putting plasma gasifiers onto its newest generations of big ships.
  - rapjr9 8y ago
    I asked a local waste handling company owner whether he'd be interested in plasma gasification. He told me that one plasma gasification plant would require all the trash from Vermont, plus parts of NY and NH and MA to keep it fed and economical. So that would require a lot of trucking. Still, that seems better than releasing all the toxins in the materials into the environment and means just one plant could service a large rural area. More plants would be needed in more densely populated areas. Still seems like a great solution.
- iandanforth 8y ago
  No, think more "food for micro-organisms to do useful work" rather than "fuel for humans."
ianbicking 8y ago
What you describe feels a little like a water treatment facility: stuff comes in, you deal with it, and materials come out (and still some waste). Water treatment is a little simpler since only water comes out... but then it's more complex because the inputs are all literally mixed together. It probably still requires some pre-sorting. People used to just pour paint down the drain. Some things can poison the system. I suspect we don't fully know what things will be problematic until we really try reclamation.
bluGill 8y ago
Multiple reasons: Lifecycle energy is a big one. We can recycle a lot of things, but if you look at the big picture: because of scale factors some things use less energy to make new from mined raw materials and dump the result into a local landfill than to collect the waste from distributed points. Note that I said some above. There are thousands of different materials in the world. Some are very cheap to recycle some are not. A large part of useful recycling efforts is good material selection in the first place. If you really want to make a difference you should start there: choose materials that are not so difficult for the waste stream.
- iandanforth 8y ago
  You describe the situation today accurately. The grand challenge is changing the energetics curve through biotechnology. That preselection of materials is the mindset I was referring to, so exactly the opposite is true; to make a meaningful advance you need to start with materials which are difficult and energy-cost-inneficient today and shift the work from exogenous sources to self, or nearly-self sustaining processes.

wool_gather 8y ago

> landfills are mountains of energy If you're talking about literally turning garbage into fuel, there's, as I understand it, very rapidly diminishing returns unfortunately. Even the apparently simple act of just burning garbage to generate electricity is complex, because you have to be concerned about what the heck is in there and what you're releasing into the air.

CptFribble 8y ago
In principle, plasma gasification can be made to work net positive energy output, plus slag for whatever you want to use slag for. In practice, it's really expensive to set up and operate without a lot of throughput, so it doesn't happen that much. Though, I've read the US Navy is putting plasma gasifiers onto its newest generations of big ships.
- rapjr9 8y ago
  I asked a local waste handling company owner whether he'd be interested in plasma gasification. He told me that one plasma gasification plant would require all the trash from Vermont, plus parts of NY and NH and MA to keep it fed and economical. So that would require a lot of trucking. Still, that seems better than releasing all the toxins in the materials into the environment and means just one plant could service a large rural area. More plants would be needed in more densely populated areas. Still seems like a great solution.
iandanforth 8y ago
No, think more "food for micro-organisms to do useful work" rather than "fuel for humans."

ianbicking 8y ago

What you describe feels a little like a water treatment facility: stuff comes in, you deal with it, and materials come out (and still some waste). Water treatment is a little simpler since only water comes out... but then it's more complex because the inputs are all literally mixed together. It probably still requires some pre-sorting. People used to just pour paint down the drain. Some things can poison the system. I suspect we don't fully know what things will be problematic until we really try reclamation.

bluGill 8y ago

Multiple reasons: Lifecycle energy is a big one. We can recycle a lot of things, but if you look at the big picture: because of scale factors some things use less energy to make new from mined raw materials and dump the result into a local landfill than to collect the waste from distributed points. Note that I said some above. There are thousands of different materials in the world. Some are very cheap to recycle some are not. A large part of useful recycling efforts is good material selection in the first place. If you really want to make a difference you should start there: choose materials that are not so difficult for the waste stream.

iandanforth 8y ago
You describe the situation today accurately. The grand challenge is changing the energetics curve through biotechnology. That preselection of materials is the mindset I was referring to, so exactly the opposite is true; to make a meaningful advance you need to start with materials which are difficult and energy-cost-inneficient today and shift the work from exogenous sources to self, or nearly-self sustaining processes.