turning garbage into energy

This is one of the energy options in one of my favorite board games, Power Grid. And I know it gets used sometimes. But here's Emily Belz in World with an update on its expansion...

Brent Dieleman likes to talk about a facility near Washington, D.C., that burns trash, which heats water for steam to turn turbines to make electricity. There are only 87 such facilities in the United States, and none has been built in the last 15 years. Covanta Energy's trash-to-energy plant in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington processes 3,000 tons of garbage every day, producing enough energy to power 75,000 homes.

The emissions from the process—while cleaner than fossil fuels—look toxic. "They're clean, but nobody wants them in their communities," said Dieleman, 28, who analyzes trash for a living at an environmental consulting firm, SCS Engineers, in Washington....

Part of promoting God's kingdom, he believes, is eliminating wastefulness. But private and public recycling programs are falling by the wayside as markets slide and the price of recyclable materials per ton plummets. "We live in such a throw-away society," said Dieleman. "The natural world, the way God created it—there is no waste."