wastenaughton

In the summer of 2004, I opened a law office in scenic Marion, Iowa, a city of about 30,000 souls. The leaders of Marion’s neighbor to the west, Cedar Rapids, quaintly view Marion as a small town whose residents are lucky to work in the larger, more metropolitan Cedar Rapids. I first learned about plasma torch technology during the ensuing months at Huntington’s Restaurant in downtown Marion, where town thinkers gather daily to discuss issues of importance the city. In the heat of the battle over where to locate the county’s new landfill, a group of Marion advocates came across the concept of vaporizing municipal solid waste, MSW, by vaporizing it with plasma torch technology. When they proposed plasma torch technology to the county solid waste organization, Bluestem, the immediate response was, “It costs too much.” The entrenched bureaucracy dominating Linn County’s solid waste agency balked at the cost of building and operating a plasma torch system to dispose of solid waste and produce energy. On learning of the possibility of such a disruptive technology to change the paradigm for disposing of garbage, recycling metal and eliminating landfills, I suggested we examine the income side of the equation as a possible way to rebut objections concerning the cost of building one. On inquiry, we found that most of the companies that claim to possess the expertise and ability to actually build and operate a plasma MSW disposal system claim all the information is proprietary, retarding our efforts to gather sufficient information about the revenue potential. Our thinking was then, and is now, that the revenue from energy production and from other byproducts of a plasma system should offset the cost of building and operating the system and might even generate a profit. We’ve slowly been gathering data as to the inputs and outputs of plasma systems and have now, with the formation of our nonprofit corporation, wastenotIowa, to educating and promoting people across the state of Iowa about the potential of alternate technologies, such as plasma to change the way we view and handle our waste. At some point, a technology solution, such as the plasma torch, will replace the landfill throughout our state.