I really enjoy living in a place where you can feel connected to nature and the natural environment that surrounds you.  Last night, while coming into the village where we live I got to see the local herd of elk grazing on grass around midnight.  I stopped the car probably about 10 feet away from them.  They looked at me and continued munching their evening meal.  I just watched for a few minutes before coming up the hill to the house.  It was a very relaxing and peaceful sight to watch.

Today, I was out in the the front yard talking to one of our neighbors when all of a sudden, I felt a piercing pain in my right hand.  I immediately looked down to see a wasp planting his rear end  into the palm of my hand.  Sure, it stung and still does nearly an hour later.  But, I just brushed the little guy off and let him go about his day and thought how lucky I was it picked me!  Sometimes it’s just the simple little things that put a smile on my face.

The idea of turning our waste into energy we all can use has been around for awhile.  Now a professor at the University of California - Davis, has developed a new technique to get more energy out of that garbage.  Ruihong Zhang has been working on her Biogas Energy Project for the past eight years.  Now the university has taken the steps to acquire the license on the product and a power company has even signed on to adapt the unit for commercial use.

The piece of technology Zhang has been toiling away on is called an “anaerobic phased solids digester”.   This type of machine is already in use at wastewater treatment plants and livestock farms around the nation, breaking down the sewage into usable gas.  Zhang has apparently improved the technology to allow the use of more wastes like food scraps, yard clippings and animal manure.  It also apparently cuts the processing time in half and produces hydrogen and methane.  Other systems apparently only produce methane.  That would be a true energy revolution, just like bio-diesel.  Can you imagine the food scraps we don’t eat and animal manure being turned into a fuel for our car?  That would be truly amazing.

UC Davis estimates that about 5 million tons of food scraps go into California landfills every year.  If one ton can produce enough energy for the average day at 10 homes, that year’s worth of food could power 50 million houses for one day or 130,000 houses for the entire year.

If you’d like to read more about Zhang’s system, head over to the website of UC Davis.