While reading an article from the Wall Street Journal, I realized the pace at which businesses are moving at in order to ensure that they are sustainable. The latest form that caught my eye was reducing emissions from household waste to produce power in the form of carbon capture. Waste itself is an area that I'm sure many others view as a negligible part of our life, an aspect that is tossed out from our mind and never thought of again (literally).
How exactly does trash play into carbon capture?
Cities such as Oslo are leading the carbon capture movement, sorting household waste into fossil waste (plastics) and biogenic waste (waste that comes from organic sources). The city then incinerates the biogenic waste and compresses it to be stored within empty caverns within the ocean floor. By incinerating the waste, the city uses a carbon capture system to collect around 90% of emissions! This process is not only intriguing, but also revolutionary in directly tying our ocean into carbon capture.
My Take
Although I am amazed by the creativity of this project and the way Oslo has integrated carbon capture into the city itself, I do have a few worries about how the emissions would affect the oceans. As mentioned previously, emissions are stored within caverns in the ocean floor, but is this guaranteed to be a safe mode of storage? If the emissions leak out from the caverns and into the water, then it could affect marine life and the ecosystem itself. Additionally, in the long run, although this process does significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, will these significantly impact the beginnings of the actual carbon cycle itself? The leakage of the emissions could alter the natural balance of carbon exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean, potentially impacting the ocean's ability to absorb future emissions.
It should be noted that with each new practice and discovery, uncertainty always is common, with such a system put out on a mass-scale, we should question the function and risks of every new innovations we learn about. If performed smoothly, perhaps using trash to reduce carbon emissions is the best and most efficient procedure that we have seen till date. On the other side, this could disrupt the balance within the carbon cycle, directly affecting our everyday life and planet. Cities such as Oslo are taking the forefront on sustainability, and with such careful integration, it should be admired and spread amongst other nations to start developing such mass-scale projects.
