Carbon Footprint:

 

A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, or product, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent. Greenhouse gases, including the carbon-containing gases carbon dioxide and methane, can be emitted through the burning of fossil fuels, land clearance and the production and consumption of food, manufactured goods, materials, wood, roads, buildings, transportation and other services.

 

Currently the focus is to lessen the carbon footprint of the existing use of fossil fuels and re-thinking how what we do impact our environment.  Therefore, the goal is to reduce the carbon footprint of current everyday activities.

 

The Emission Resource Group has focused on not only reducing the carbon footprint of our everyday activities, but removing the waste already stored in landfills which continuously release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, and eventually pollute the groundwater.

 

Landfill Carbon Footprint:

 

The carbon footprint from a landfill is 0.395 tons of CO2 equivalent per ton of MSW.

 

Consider the reduction CO2 emissions and our carbon footprint between wastes stored in a landfill from that footprint created from waste thermal conversion. The carbon footprint of municipal waste (MSW) thermal conversion is −0.179 tons CO2 equivalent per ton of MSW.

 

(Jeswani, H.K., Smith, R.W. & Azapagic, A. Int J Life Cycle Assess 18, 218–229 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-012-0441-8)

 

Through waste thermal conversion we reduce the carbon footprint from 0.395 to a negative 0.179 tons of CO2. This only considers newly generated wastes.  ERG strives to both reduce the waste causes CO2 generated on daily basis but also the removal of exiting landfill stored waste.

 

Landfills within the US alone generate some 148 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, mostly in the form of methane gas.

 

ERG’s facilities incorporated the scrubber technologies of Envirocare International, which further decreases the carbon footprint of incineration and creation of electrical energy from our waste-to-energy facilities.

 

Our Waste-to-energy plants Increases the landfill gas recovery from 53 to 75 % and its utilization for electrical energy from 35 to 50 %, reduces the carbon footprint of landfilling by a half.

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As we move forward to Clean Energy, the use of wastes to produce electricity both utilizes the energy stored in waste and lessen the need for coal or other fossil burning fuels for the production of electrical energy.

 

The electricity produced by burning oil or coal can be displaced by the thermal conversion process of municipal waste (MSW), its carbon footprint reduces that of coal by −0.51 and −0.35 tons CO2 equivalent per ton of MSW.

 

The goal of ERG is to remove wastes stored and in landfills bringing the land back to its’ natural state.