That half-eaten sandwich and paper plate you send to the garbage dump today could help turn on the stove or kitchen lights a year from now.
Using one of the latest high-tech gadgets in garbage dumps, the natural gas that is created when organic material decomposes can be converted into electric power.
It`s known as a ``gas-to-electricity`` plant, and Du Page County Forest Preserve district officials are considering bids to build the systems in the Greene Valley and Mallard Lake landfills.
The two systems would be the first in Du Page, but such gas-to-electricity programs have been in operation across the country since the early 1980s. Waste Management Inc., the Oak Brook-based waste disposal giant, operates five in Illinois and 22 elsewhere in the United States.
Some residents near landfills have opposed the idea because the equipment is noisy and because it would put more capital investment into landfills that they would rather see shut down.
But some activists have supported the concept for its recycling and revenue-generating benefits. The system eliminates the alternative practice of releasing burning landfill gas into the environment.
County staffers calculate the sale of the recovered gas could generate up to $1.4 million a year.
Pat Cowhey, a member of the county citizens` group Citizens for a healthy and Safe Environment, said residents believe that money could be put into improving the Greene Valley Forest Preserve where the southern landfill is located.
The new system would provide a recycling program of sorts.
What forest preserve planners propose to do is put that fuel to use.
In landfills, methane-rich gas is naturally created within the buried garbage as paper, food and other organic materials decompose in the moist underground.
At present, the gas at the two Du Page landfills is siphoned to a central point and burned into the atmosphere through a flare. But at several U.S. landfill sites, including five in Illinois, the gas is diverted into machinery that cleans it and burns it to drive turbines that generate electricity.
The machinery in such dumps as the Settler`s Hill landfill in Batavia collects the methane through a system of vertical pipe wells dug to the bottom of the landfill, said Scott Fowler, site operation manager there. Like the Greene Valley landfill in Du Page, Settlers` Hillin Kane County is publicly owned but operated by Waste Management Inc.
The wells collect gas from a network of horizontal pipes snaking through the mounds of underground garbage and feed it to the generators.
``It`s a resource that`s already there,`` said Fowler. ``Once the gas has been created, you have to deal with it.``
Most landfill operators deal with the gas by burning it through the flares, a practice opposed locally by environmental and neighborhood groups including CHASE, Citizens for a Healthy and Safe Environment.
The fuel equivalent of roughly 150,000 barrels of oil is burned at the Greene Valley and Mallard Lake sites every year, said Richard Utt, director of general services for the Du Page County Forest Preserve District, which owns the two landfills.
Forest preserve officials in recent years have eyed the possibility of making a profit from that gas, but plans have been stymied while contracts to operate the landfills were negotiated.
The district last month received bids from seven companies, including Waste Management and Browning-Ferris Industries, the operators of the two landfills. An eighth proposal is expected from the county`s Environmental Concerns Department, operator of the waste water treatment plant in Woodridge, near Greene Valley.
Use of the electricity at that plant would guarantee the forest preserve a buyer for its gas and would cut the county`s current cost to operate the sewage plant, according to a staff proposal from the Environmental Concerns Department.
Construction for each plant would cost almost $7 million, county planners estimate. Both could remain open 15 to 20 years after the landfills shut down, Utt said.
Though it represents another hefty proposed investment into the landfills, the gas recovery program could be the first outlay to gain any favor from groups opposed to the dumps.
CHASE members are looking hopefully at the possibility that money earned from the sale of the gas could be put toward improving the forest preserves where the landfills are located.
Kevin Greene, research director for Citizens for a Better Environment, said environmentalists in that group also credit such systems` recycling benefits, although they are wary that operators will try to lift a ban on yard waste in landfills in order to increase the amount of methane produced.
There is also concern that the industrial plant will be placed in the heart of the forest preserve.
``We`re talking forest preserve here,`` said Lynne Padovan of the Illinois Environmental Council. ``We want to hear the birds chirping, not the turbines humming.``
Concerns of a vocal contingent of residents who watch developments at the landfills will be a real consideration as the forest preserve commission considers the bids this month. Recommendations to the commission will not be based solely on who can return the highest profit, but also on factors like where the plant would be placed, Utt said.
``I think it`s a wonderful system we`re talking about,`` said commission member Lloyd Renfro, who has seen it through the planning stages on the county side and now as a member of the forest preserve`s landfill committee. ``Now I want to see us get the best deal to run it.``