And it doesn't even get bad gas. Waste-glass tiles, under an agreement currently being negotiated, someday could even line Richland streets. Rita Pool, environmental scientist with Technical Resources International in Richland, wants to see the technology employed closer to home. Any organism that doesn't learn to recycle its own waste soon chokes. IET's smaller melters consume a ton a day, and the large ones could have the capacity for about 500 tons a day, Surma said.
Proponents call the project the perfect recycling program.
It will, they say, reduce greenhouse gases, extend the life of landfills and create clean energy without smokestacks or giant pits of garbage. Even state Ecology Department Director Tom Fitzsimmons, in town for the governor's visit, stopped by IET on Tuesday to praise the invention. It's terrific to have a technology on the market that can help us solve several environmental problems without creating others. The plasma melter is a spinoff of Hanford technology, building on decades of work at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory operated by Battelle. And it's not the only try at melting waste.