November 24th Class - Lee County Waste to Energy Plant

In today's class, we visited the Lee County Waste to Energy Plant. This field trip was cool because the main idea behind the plant is that this facility takes wasted garbage from all of the residents of Lee County, who put trash on their curb, and burns it up to make energy for the residents who make up Lee County. This facility processes 1,873 tons of waste per day and processes that waste into 57.3 megawatts clean energy. Most places around the nation have landfills that sit in residential communities, produces pollution and odors that residents that live near the fills breathe, and are atrocious toxic dumps that don't look good. Covanta, the company that makes these plants, saw landfills as a waste and took an innovative approach and created a system that recycles a substance that most people wouldn't think to be recyclable. The United States has a goal for 70% reduction of waste productions. With the innovative technology and development of Waste to Energy plants, Lee County was able to reach 65% reduction, while most counties and states sit around 30%. The plant essentially takes all of the garbage, burns it up, processes all of the heat through a turbine that produces the energy and processes it through multiple acting filters that clean the energy. 50 megawatts of the 57.3 megawatts produced get sold to Seminole Electric Cooperative, while the remaining energy that isn't sold is used to run the facility. This facility does more than just process waste into energy. The Lee County Waste to Energy Plant also processes materials to make tires and other metals that can be recycled and put back into the market to be sold. This multi-use facility has a model that should be present in counties and states all across the nation. There a countless landfills that exist in the United States that could be produced into clean energy and make recyclable products instead of sitting at a landfill being used for nothing but pollution. This type of facility will change the future and make energy accessible to everyone.