The Oil Drum

One of the general conclusions that most people come to after serious study of peak oil and how we can adapt to it is that there is no one-shot solution. Rather a wide variety of niche solutions will fill many of the puzzle pieces and together can help maintain a certain level of societal complexity.

One possible niche that seems almost too perfect would be to fuel garbage collection trucks with CNG, preferably converted from methane gas from anaerobic digestion that would have otherwise have been released into the atmosphere . A nationwide fleet of more than 126,000 Garbage trucks operate daily in almost exclusively residential areas including the most dense urban areas of the country. They are a major contributor of ground level pollution and unhealthy air. At the same time, 450-650 billion cubic feet per year of methane waste leeches out of landfills each year which is a significant contributor to greenhouse gases.