Waste turned to energy

Andre Lafleche will tell you he's not in the garbage business. Rather, he manages one of society's most abundant untapped resources.

The 61-year-old semi-retired landfill owner is in the business of turning one man's trash into a treasure trove of high-value energy and electricity.

He's doing it one ton of waste at a time at Lafleche Environmental, a cutting-edge engineered landfill in eastern Ontario that, when operating at maximum capacity in five years, has the potential to generate enough clean electricity to power a town of 6,000 souls.

"It's not just garbage," he says emphatically. "We should view waste as a resource. What we put in the ground has a lot of energy value. You would be appalled to see what goes into a landfill."

He says metals and plastics can be filtered out before dumping and recycled or processed into high-value commercial energy.

"Why use a fossil fuel just once [in making plastics] when we can use it again for fuel? We should use different technologies to recoup that energy."

For solid waste, that means a bioreactor. The technology uses wastewater known as leachate to create an oxygen-free environment within the landfill that accelerates the decomposition of waste and the production of greenhouse gases such as methane. The gases can then be collected and converted into electricity.

Lafleche first contemplated establishing the bioreactor as long ago as the 1970s; today it's a reality. Pipes will be laid on site this spring to collect enough methane to initially produce two megawatts of power -- enough electricity to light up half the nearby village of Casselman, Ont., which has a population of 3,294. The potential is so great that the company has already entered into an agreement to sell the gas for electricity, and is also in talks to supply gas to Enbridge, Ont.

"This is just the start," says Lafleche. "A landfill will always produce greenhouse gases. The bioreactor speeds the process so that instead of 50 or 100 years for the landfill to stabilize, it will take two years and you produce the same amount of gas."

Across Canada, landfills produce 27 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, equal to six million cars on the road.

On a grander scale, landfill owner Waste Management is actively converting 60 landfill-gas-to-energy (LFGTE) facilities in Canada and the United States over the next five years. The company claims it will eventually generate 700 megawatts of clean energy at its LFGTE sites, enough to replace eight million barrels of oil. At Ste. Sophie, 50 km north of Montreal, the conversion of the municipal dump into Waste Management's star clean-energy producer is a done deal. Once family-owned, the site was purchased and updated by Waste Management in 1997.

Now, says Martin Dussault, Waste Management's public affairs director for Quebec, the landfill's energy-producing bioreactor has become an integral part of the local economy. In a happy marriage of supply and demand, the bioreactor provides 80 per cent of energy needs to Cascade Corporation's pulp and paper mill, 15 km away.

"Cascade needed a cheaper source of energy for the mill to be sustainable," he says. "So in 2004, we reached an agreement and started sending them landfill gas in 2005. We have the perfect partner who needs energy 24/7, which we produce. It's a very green and sustainable project for the community that will keep jobs local."

Dussault says the Cascade arrangement has been so successful, the landfill has applied for a 25-year renewal permit.

"We want to fill 100 per cent of Cascade's energy needs," he says. "The extension would mean we can continue to provide energy to Cascade longer, and to other customers in the future."