Lancaster's Waste-to-Ice Cream Initiative

By Dan Shapley News Editor Money doesn't grow on trees, but in Lancaster County, Pa., it does fume out of landfills. The Solid Waste Management Authority there has taken an already progressive notion - burning methane escaping from the county landfill to make electricity - and tacked on two money-making additions. With its corporate partner, PPL Energy Services, it sells steam from the power plant to the nearby Turkey Hill Dairy, and carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. Burning landfill gas alone is beneficial in two ways. One, it keeps methane - a greenhouse gas 21-times more powerful than carbon dioxide - out of the atmosphere. Two, it can power electric generators, creating a source of electricity cleaner than traditional coal-fired plants. Lancaster County's landfill is one of 425 in the country to use methane to generate electricity. But another 560, by Environmental Protection Agency estimates, could follow suit. They would be wise to look at Lancaster County (pop. 490,562), which received an EPA award for its efforts this year. Besides producing garbage power, the authority shares the profit from the excess heat produced at PPL's plant that is piped to Turkey Hill. The growing national ice cream maker, a significant employer in Lancaster, uses the steam to sanitize equipment, allowing it to rest its two diesel-powered boilers. It could save 240,000 gallons of diesel each year. The authority also makes a profit on what it doesn't produce: greenhouse gases. Based on the methane that isn't escaping to the atmosphere, it has sold $175,000 worth of carbon credits to the Chicago Climate Exchange, a voluntary carbon market. And that's just in the first 15 months, before the plant has even started running at full tilt. The global carbon market last year tripled to $30 billion, the World Bank's carbon finance reported this month. That has others looking to Lancaster. "There are small county-operated landfills or authority-operated landfills out there that are now looking into it - dozens of them have called me," said Executive Director James Warner. More of May's Innovators Efficient Homes By Design In Greenburg, N.Y. A Zero-water Building In Little Rock, Ark. One Million Trees in Los Angeles April's Innovators A Local Food Web Site in Plymouth, N.H. The Eternal Sunshine of Solar Access in Boulder, Colo. The Green Roof Revolution in Chicago, Ill. Clean Mobility in the Twin Cities