The Doctor Emmett Brown Project

"Emmett Lathrop "Doc" Brown, Ph.D. is a fictional scientist and is the inventor of the first time machine, which he builds out of a De Lorean sports car. His earlier inventions met with limited success, but got the De Lorean hover-converted and installed a "Mr. Fusion". The Mr Fusion reactor eliminated the need for plutonium, and allowed the time machine to operate off of ordinary household garbage."1.

Back to the Future may be a fictional story but this concept of harnessing energy from garbage is the now. Methane gases are being captured and processed into energy all over the country. The future of our landfills have a bright rainbow spanning over them. It's people like Brian Stocking, project manager with TD&H Engineering Consultants out of Kalispell who are engineering projects of the like. In cooperation with Flathead Electrical the county landfill is building a methane production facility.

Methane (měth'ān')
n. An odorless, colorless, flammable gas, CH 4 , the major constituent of natural gas, that is used as a fuel and is an important source of hydrogen and a wide variety of organic compounds.2.

"Montana: Co-op plants to get power from landfill."3.
Energy innovation is possible when people willingly learn new ways of producing, delivering, and consuming energy. That means companies assume significant financial and technological risk when exploring the use of non-traditional fuels to produce power.
Today, America's rural electric cooperatives are taking great strides to change the way they provide power for their member-consumers. Because innovation is often expensive, there are benefits in partnering with others to get the job done. Recently, Basin Electric joined with other G&Ts and distribution cooperatives to form the National Renewables Cooperative Organization (NRCO).
Every day Innovative ideas for using Mother Nature to produce more clean power are born - biofuels, solar energy and harnessing more hydro power are just a few evolving trends in America's energy industries. People have become more energy conscious and they are supporting efficiency goals and energy conservation.
Some Basin Electric members have boldly taken the initiative to look for new ways to capture and use energy:
• South Dakota: Sioux Valley Energy's Project E2
• Montana: Co-op plants to get power from landfill
http://www.basinelectric.com/Environment/Efficiency_and_Conservation/Energy_Innovators/index.html

It is also with the help of private citizens and proprietors like Downtown Pizza in Whitefish (550 East 1st Street) who use biodegradable take-away products. These vegetable based products include large clamshell containers, salad containers, cups and forks, knives and spoons. You can reuse the small salad containers and cups as seed starters, germinate and plant straight into the ground or toss in garbage. These products will aide in the process of decomposition at the landfill. Bravo! Kudos to all the other business not mentioned here.


"Vegetable Based Take-Away Container"

Sources: 1. http://www.wikipedia.org/, 2. http://dictionary.reference.com/, 3. http://www.basinelectric.com/