Our Green Streets Blog

California LNG Plant at Altamont Source: Len Butler, Waste Management

According to joint venture partners, Linde North America and Waste Management, construction on the world’s largest plant to convert landfill gas into clean vehicle fuel is nearing completion.  Project details were shared today during a presentation at the National Biomethane Summit in Sacramento, Calif. The joint venture partners are installing systems to purify and liquefy landfill methane gas.
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For us sneering at the notion of plastics and biodegradability, it is time to stand back and jump up!

Biodegradable plastic bottles will soon be on grocery shelves. Source: Enso Bottles, LLC

What’ll it be: 10,000 years, or two years? That is the question when it comes to the life expectancy of the plastic bottle you drink from.

For those of us looking for the next level of plastic – something that’s not going to be around for eternity – even compostable – we may need to look no further than Arizona.
That’s where ENSO Bottles, LLC is making plastic drinking bottles that are – yes – biodegradable. Not only biodegradable, but when they go to the landfill, digestible to microbes making methane, which can be captured and converted to energy.

This is exactly the kind of cycle in waste-to-energy that ENSO Bottle co-founder and president, Danny Clark, wants. “When our bottles go into the landfill, the idea is that the bottled will break down and create methane.”

Thus Clark can proudly list one of his company’s operating mantras that it develops products that can create value when they are discarded. Clark says there is no exact time for how long it takes his bottles to break down, but estimated the time to be about two years.

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