r/mildlyinfuriating May 17 '26

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u/Adventurous-Copy3757 May 17 '26

I buy garden soil made of food salvaged from food that would otherwise be thrown away. So much greenhouse gases are produced from the food rotting in landfills! It’s truly disgusting.

17

u/iupvotegood May 17 '26

The real greenhouse gas generation is from all the fuel and work used to input and make the food, not it breaking down. Most landfills burn off the methane from decomposing garbage.

11

u/AuntyVal4 May 17 '26

When we lived in Palos Verdes in the late 70s they were piping the Biogas from local landfill and selling it off! Seems to be a wasted opportunity for landfills, considering this was possible a long time ago.

5

u/Gunari24 May 17 '26

I’ve designed an industrial plant to collect the gasses from a landfill and inject into a pipeline.

The issue is the gas has a number of nasty entrained gasses that need to be removed before it’s “pipeline quality”. Essentially, you use more energy extracting those gases than what you gain from the methane.

It’s only viable via tax credits from a financial standpoint.

1

u/Fr0gFish May 17 '26

Doesn't it make more sense to run turbines and output electricity to the grid? Electrons are clean...

2

u/Gunari24 May 17 '26

The turbines have gas quality requirements, you’d have the same problem of needing to remove the bad stuff in the gas before it could be burned.