Dumpster Converts Trash Into Gas (Power)

This might be the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. It's a dumpster that takes most types of trash (organics, especially) and converts them into gas that can be burned to create electricity. Pretty frikki' cool!

IST Energy makes this little power plant to sell to office complexes, hospitals, schools, and other large buildings. It's cost is pretty high, but considering how much some of these places can spend monthly in garbage removal and how much of that garbage can stay on-site and be made into electricity and heat production (as much as 15% of the average large building's needs), the price tag gets smaller fast.

Garbage still has to be sorted before it's thrown in, of course, since some things like plastics, metals, and glass aren't good for this process. Most buildings do this already, however, on some scale, so this is not much of an issue compared to households and smaller institutions. The other garbage that's left is totally recyclable too, of course.

Also, almost all emissions from these dumpster-power-generators are carbon and few (if any) toxins are released at all (most are filtered or reburned). This means that the dumpsters are much greener than, say, the local landfill or the average power utility.

There's a great animation of it over on the company's website that does a better job than I can of explaining the process. Click here to see that.