With the whole of the world trying to go green and combat global warming, one must wonder why more effort isn’t used to find a viable alternative to the traditional methods of solid waste management and disposal. More and more people are trying to help reduce the solid wastes that they put out every year by recycling the things they can’t reuse, but this is only creating a small dent in the problem. In order to completely solve the problems associated with sprawling landfills and excessive waste being exported to them for the decomposition over years and sometimes millennia, a solution will need to come quickly and in the form of a more effective system.

Thankfully, many scientists and proponents of finding better waste management solutions have been toying with this very concept for a while now and have come up with a viable solution: Plasma arc gasification plants. In several locations all around the world, plasma arc gasification has come to fruition and has begun to reduce the amount of waste that is sent to landfills every day.

Plasma arc gasification is a way that an electrical arc that reaches the same temperatures as the surface of the sun can be used to break down solid waste materials into more basic parts. In most cases, this intense heat not only eliminates most of the pollution that is associated with incineration and the like, but it also reduces the actual solid waste down to nothing more than basic elements, mainly hydrogen. With this technology it may be possible, in the very near future, to consolidate our electrical stations and our waste stations into a single unit where the gasses will be used as a fuel to create electrical energy.