Recycling Innovations in Spain

STORY:

A rubbish recycling plant near Madrid has a new take on recycling. Left over organic waste is transformed into bio-gas. One plant can make enough bio-gas to provide electric power for thirty five thousand families in the area. The process starts when rubbish collected in seventy towns around the province of Madrid is taken to the bio-methane production plant in Pinto.

[Carlos Rivero, Public Environmental Department Head]:
"First we separate organic from non organic waste. The organic part is taken to a bio-digestion process to accelerate all the fermentation and degradation process in order to produce energy in the form of a very important bio-gas, and to prevent these materials from rotting.”

The organic waste is then mashed up and kept in digestive casks for twenty one days. Methane gas is then extracted and driven to electric power generators. In a parallel process in the same plant, the non-organic refuse is once again sorted by a separation machine that picks up metal and plastic cans. The rest of the refuse is then taken to a nearby rubbish dump where it's kept for twenty years. Chimneys installed inside the rubbish dump allow even more methane gas to be extracted and transformed into electric power.

[Carlos Rivero, Public Environmental Department Head]:
 The objective is to take the right material to the dump in order to produce energy with this bio-methane gas that we extract from the old rubbish dumps and also with the solar panels that we have on the roof.”

But don't worry about the smell. The plant is thirty kilometers away from the capital, so no one will complain. According to the Madrid's local government, the plant generates eighty four million kilowatts per hour, energy that would otherwise have gone unharnessed.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

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