Jack D. Lauber and Alyssa A. Lappen

As we search for esoteric alternative sources of energy to cut our use of fossil fuels, there is a readily available energy source no farther than the local landfill.

Israeli academics and officials recently invited Mr. Lauber---in his capacity as a Chemical and Environmental Engineer, a Research Associate of Columbia University's New York City Earth Engineering Center and a former New York State Department of Environmental Conservation engineer---to advise them at Ariel University and the Ministry of the Environment on waste to energy (WTE).

Israel should follow the examples set by Japan, the European Union, and several U.S. states, including Florida and Minnesota. They have all constructed state-of the-art waste to energy facilities, which generate some 700 kilowatt hours of electric power for every ton of municipal solid waste (MSW) they burn. Such facilities will sharply reduce Israel's need for high-cost energy imports. Consider: Tel Aviv generates over 2,000 tons of trash daily, and Jerusalem more than 1,300 tons.

When all that garbage is burned in multi-staged, 21st century controlled burning waste-to-energy plants, it will generate more than 2.3 million kilowatt hours daily. That will be nearly 70 million kilowatt hours a month---enough to power nearly 200,000 homes for 30 days. After all, one ton of municipal solid waste contains more energy than a barrel of oil.

Israel's WTE plants will replace landfills that trash precious resources---like the garbage mountain sitting dangerously at Israel's defunct Heria dump near Tel Aviv. Officials plan to cover it and make a park. Israel won't create any more such monsters. Japan mines municipal wastes to fuel WTE plants, reclaiming both land and energy. Israel should do the same.

Israel will also harvest the environmental benefits of eliminating landfills.

Dumps are toxic time bombs. In past decades, New York City's borough of Staten Island buried upwards of 100 million tons of municipal waste---without the landfill liners prescribed during the 1980s. Disposable household wastes, together with illicit hazardous materials, react chemically, generating additional contaminants. Thus toxins will continue leaching into adjacent New York City wetlands---and flowing into its air---throughout the 21st century.

Eventually, properly lined landfills will also leak toxins as their industrial-strength plastic liners degrade. Moreover, as they disintegrate, organic landfill wastes also emit methane---21 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Some U.S. landfills do harvest gas emissions. But even at those landfills that reclaim half of their landfill gas, atmospheric emissions exceed by as much as 95% those generated by high-tech waste-to-energy plants.

Not surprisingly, therefore, virtually every European nation and municipality bans MSW landfills. Instead, they have constructed waste-to-energy plants that recycle some 2 million tons of garbage annually, generating enough electricity and heat for more than 30 million people yearly.

Israel has definitively determined to harness waste-to-energy technologies. Yet a few misguided environmental groups oppose the plan, despite Israel's tiny land mass and limited water resources. To avoid the potential pitfalls such over-zealous groups can create, Israel should consider the monumental garbage headache plaguing New York City thanks to “environmental” objections.

For each ton of MSW, waste-to-energy plants emit five times less toxic particulate matter into the air than diesel trucks. Nevertheless, simply to avoid trash-to-energy facilities, NYC sends 600 diesel trucks daily to Pennsylvania and Virginia landfills---shipping at least 4 million tons of residential solid waste annually. At more than $120 per ton, New York taxpayers spend some $700 million-plus annually funding garbage exports. Meanwhile, NYC loses at least $50 a ton in potential revenues from local waste-to-energy electrical generation. Burning even 70% of its residential garbage with state-of-the-art WTE technology, NYC could produce enough electricity to power 236,000 homes and help avoid blackouts. The city could also recycle most WTE plant wastes---valuable metals, and road-building and construction materials.

Environmentalists created all this fiscal and energy waste by relying on obsolete data concerning dioxins and other WTE by-products. By citing outdated numbers, they scuttled waste-to-energy in New York with fear tactics. They lobby for an impossible dream---"zero waste" generation. Engineers will never create a garbage disposal system that generates “zero waste,” for this is mathematically impossible. First, manufacturers will never create fully recyclable products. Only about 25% of plastic wastes, for example, can be recycled, although they contain energy that should not be wasted. Indeed, plastics overall contain more energy than coal (and can burn cleaner).

Europe, Japan and several U.S. states have built energy-recovery facilities that facilitate “zero waste to landfill” plans. Multistage, controlled-burn WTE plants have eliminated toxins and dioxin emissions by upwards of 99 percent in the last decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports.

Israel, known for its technological advances, should focus on building as many state-of-the-art WTE plants as soon as possible, hopefully serving as a model for the U.S. This will not only reduce Israel's need for energy imports and cut pollution but also redirect finances into Israel's struggling economy.

Most important, massive waste-to-energy programs that add to domestic energy production both in Israel and in the West will cut demand for high-priced oil and gas, reducing the revenues of Middle East regimes that promote and fund terrorism

Jack Lauber is a Chemical and Environmental Engineer. Alyssa A. Lappen is a senior fellow at the American Center for Democracy.