Each year in New Jersey more than 8 million tons of waste — yard litter, household table scraps and livestock manure, among other debris — is thrown away in garbage dumps, burned in incinerators, or disposed of elsewhere.


So what, you ask?  


A Rutgers University study says that we should be looking at this “waste” as a “resource” and suggests that half of it could be put to use to generate electricity or even create a cleaner-burning fuel to power motor vehicles.


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“If tapped, those 5.4 million tons of waste could generate more than 1,124 megawatts of electricity — a larger amount than New Jersey’s highly touted solar program now generates, or the equivalent of approximately 311 million gallons of gasoline-equivalent fuel,” Tom Johnson reports in NJ Spotlight.


“How to tap that resource and turn it into an asset to produce clean energy is part of a revamped initiative launched by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities this past week.” 


Learn more in Tom’s story: Board of Public Utilities Hopes to Get Into Garbage in a Big Way 


Here’s the Rutgers study on biomass resources 


Related environmental news stories:
Judge Rules Biomass Plants Have to Obey the Law – SustainableBusiness.com
Appalachian State University Receives Biomass Grant – Domestic Fuel
The Price of Being Politically Innocuous – Biomass Magazine (blog)
Greenfield biomass project dead for now – MassLive.com

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