General Composting

Boston, MA

Local City Rankings Article

Boston, MA: Taking In the Trash In Boston

Used to be you took out the trash. But if Boston officials have their way, the trash will soon be coming in—at least some of it, that is. City officials hope to use this trash to produce enough energy to power about 1,500 homes. It’s all part of an innovative new initiative to create an indoor composting center that would help slash green-house gas emissions from the decaying pile of discarded food and yard-cuttings that comprise Beantown’s outdoor, 6,000-ton composting program. The new facility would allow officials to separate out the high-energy components in the pile and feed them into an anaerobic digester, where they would be converted to methane gas. This biofuel would then be used to power a turbine that could generate 1.5 megawatts of power. Not bad for a pile of garbage! In Boston (and around the country) outdoor composti