Garbage is one of those ugly facts of modern life that just can’t be ignored. Although it is sometimes easy to forget, with the convenience of disposable everythings and our elaborate waste management infrastructure, we are all churning it out. The waste that we produce (at an average of four and a half pounds per day per American) isn’t going away, either. As garbage accumulates, it creates ongoing pollution problems that can last for decades, even after the landfill is closed. In Yancey County, North Carolina, however, the EnergyXchange is pioneering a new way of dealing with landfill pollution that creates some new, much more positive, byproducts: food, native plants, education, and art.
In 1994, the Yancey-Mitchell County municipal landfill closed, putting 350,000 tons of garbage under a solid clay cap and a thin covering of grass. Though this is standard procedure for small rural landfills, it is hardly ideal. The trash decomposes slowly in the anaerobic conditions created by the tight seal, releasing methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) as it does. These gases, when they migrate into the air, are among the worst of the greenhouse gases.

Simply burning the methane that is created by the landfill, though, results in a 21-fold decrease in the impact of the gas on global warming. Landfills above a certain size are now required to burn their methane emissions on-site. What the EnergyXchange is able to do, beyond simply mitigating the effect of landfill emissions, is trap the methane of the Yancey/Mitchell landfill and use it as an energy source for seven greenhouses and artists’ studios. A feasibility study done by the EPA has estimated that by catalyzing this “free” energy, the environmental impact of the project is equivalent to planting 14,000 acres of trees or taking 21,000 cars off the road in North Carolina.

The products of this free energy are of two different varieties. One side of the EnergyXchange is its business incubator program for glass and clay artists. Area artists are given work and gallery space for a residency of up to three years, including free gas for the kilns and glass ovens from the landfill.

The other side of the EnergyXchange mission is sustainable horticulture. To meet the rapidly expanding market for native southern Appalachian ornamental species like rhododendrons and azaleas, six greenhouses are heated with landfill methane and used as growing spaces for these valuable native plants. The plants are grown carefully from seeds that are sustainably harvested, instead of from root stock that depletes natural sources and creates more disease-prone plants. The free energy from the landfill makes it possible for nursery director Lisa Rayburn to extend the growing season into early spring and late fall, and she expects to sell 50,000 plants to local nurseries this year. “I see a lot of my wholesale customers coming back every year,” Lisa says. “They really value the quality of the plants and the fact that they are sustainably grown.”

The conservation of native ornamental plants is particularly important now, at a time when their popularity is booming but their numbers in the wild are declining. The EnergyXchange has also created a tissue culture lab on the campus of the Mayland Community College, where Rayburn has obtained a license to propagate rare and endangered species of the southern Appalachians. At the lab, students gain valuable experience in sophisticated laboratory techniques, while actively helping the EnergyXchange in their mission to demonstrate sustainability in energy use and horticulture.

Yet another greenhouse on the EnergyXchange campus is used in an innovative aquaponic food production system. Tilapia fish are housed in four 900-gallon tanks that are heated to tropical temperatures with the landfill methane. Waste from the fishes’ tanks is fed into hydroponic beds of spinach, basil, chard and kale, where the fish waste provides abundant nutrients for the growing plants. Solid material settles out in the gravel plant beds and the water, thus cleaned, is circulated back to the fish tanks. The result is a nearly closed system that requires only feed for the fish and gas from the landfill to operate.

Projects to utilize landfill gas on a much more massive scale to power industry have been undertaken before, but the EnergyXchange is the first to demonstrate the viability of using landfill gas to support small-scale creative enterprises in a rural environment. Today there are over six hundred other landfills across the country that are considering using the EnergyXchange model to develop their own projects. In their commitment to sustainability and responsibility at every level of the project design--from energy use, to food production, to local economic revitalization and education--the EnergyXchange provides a positive way for communities and individuals to rethink the garbage that is piling up around them.
Find out more about the EnergyXchange at www.energyxchange.org, or by calling (828) 675-5541. Visitors are welcome; just call first.

Ginger Kowal is a volunteer with the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project and a biology major at UNCA.

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