Why would that be beneficial?  Well, considering that rotting garbage in landfills produce a large amount of methane gas, this really has the potential to allow landfill owners to produce something usable from those seemingly useless heaps of trash!  Truck companies like Mack and AB Volvo have been working for years now, partnering with some large waste facilities in an effort to both produce a useful fuel from the methane as well as a truck that the facilities can use for hauling that would run on this extremely clean form of natural gas.

A partnership with Waste Management of CA and Mack  is currently testing the process in the first ever plant that was designed specifically for this purpose and is said to be able to produce 13,000 gallons of usable fuel from landfill methane per day.  They are referring to this fuel as Landfill Natural Gas or LNG and it has been designated as a  ”super-ultra-low carbon fuel” by the California Air Resources Board which is even better news to environmentalists.  Additionally, Sweden’s AB Volvo has also been working with Mack in an effort to develop a “total solution” landfill gas product that offers fuel production technology combined with natural gas-powered vehicles.

With gas prices on the rise and our dependence on foreign oil increasing, these new technologies on the horizon are very welcomed and give us hope for the future of recycling and the preservation of our environment.