City College of New York professor Mario Castaldi talks about trash at the PDX Nerd Nite event on June 3. Photo courtesy D. Scott Frey - http://photo.fx4.net
The air smelled of hot buttered popcorn and cold microbrew beer. Bright spotlights lit up an empty stage while a trash trivia slideshow played on the screen. The room filled with people in a rush to find their seats.
Hundreds of people had descended upon the Clinton Street Theater to catch Portland Nerd Nite.
The event, on June 3, was sponsored by Metro as part of the Let's Talk Trash series of community events and featured a trivia game, tons of New York City trash jokes and a presentation on the usefulness of garbage entitled "What can garbage do for us?"
The presentation was given by Marco Castaldi, associate professor from The City College of New York and director of the Combustion and Catalysis Laboratory.
Castaldi joked that "just because I am an Italian from New York doesn't make me an expert on garbage." His expertise, he said, is because he knew how to extract energy from burning trash.
While burning trash conjures images of using open-air burn barrels in back yards and releasing pollutants into the air, Castaldi demonstrated that modern day trash burning can be safe and efficient.
Castaldi showed the layouts of several industrial trash combustion facilities and talked about the process of turning waste into energy. Trash is burned and produces steam that turns a turbine, which produces energy.
One ton of processed waste produces 700 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The average monthly use for a house in Oregon is 957 kilowatt-hours, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The facilities also have processes to clean the gases, such as adding urea to nitrogen oxide to produce nitrogen gas and water.
The facilities do produce dioxins, a pollutant, but Castaldi said in 100 years of continuous use, a waste-to-energy facility will produce as many dioxins as a 15 minute firework show.
There was some tension in the audience on whether trash burning would mean people shouldn't reduce, reuse and recycle. Castaldi, in a later interview, said waste management should happen through several modes.
"The future of waste management is to definitely try to extract energy and materials in a diverse way… composting, recycling, reduce, reusing, extracting the energy whether it be combustion or gasification," Castaldi said.
Metro Councilor Bob Stacey said the technology of waste to energy might become part of the regional solid waste roadmap in the future.
"The roadmap is a way of looking at all our systems, all the facilities that serve the solid waste stream and try to reduce the solid waste stream by diversion to recyclable energy," Stacey said. "We are scratching the surface today – we are looking for new technology to this area."
Stacey said that there is concern in Oregon about going toward waste to energy, but after learning about it at Nerd Nite, he sees fewer risks.
Nerd Nite host Amanda Thomas said reducing the amount of waste that goes into the waste stream is still important, but if waste to energy is a better way to deal with trash she would agree to the change.
"Obviously the best option would be to reduce the amount of waste that goes into the stream, period," Thomas said. "We gotta do something with it. If this is a better way and reduces the amount of fossil fuels that we have to use for everything, then I am all for it."
Castaldi and his students conducted public opinion research in New York City about trash combustion. The public had one consistent comment about what to do with New York's trash, Castaldi said: "Give it to New Jersey."
But, he said, people mostly didn't know about trash combustion. Once they knew what it was, they were supportive of the idea, he said.