Local landfill a green energy source for Mars factory
10 July 2008 - United States
From left to right, top to bottom: Waco Regional Landfill; methane well heads; Mars plant boiler face; boiler flame produced by burning landfill and natural gas.
Methane gas from city landfill powers Waco snack food plant
As part of a company-wide effort to reduce its environmental footprint around the world, Mars, Incorporated is striving to make its operations more sustainable at every level.
As a recent example, one of the company’s largest U.S. snack food plants located in Waco, Texas has converted 60% of its heating fuel source from natural gas to methane gas harvested from the city landfill. With enough supply to power the plant’s boilers for the next 25 years, Mars is significantly reducing its carbon footprint and production costs.
Using renewable methane will save the company over half a million dollars a year – and potentially more if gas prices continue to rise. It will also reduce the plant’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by more than 10,000 metric tons. That is equivalent to removing 1,900 cars from the road, planting 2,300 acres of pine or fir forest, heating 2,700 homes or saving 24,000 barrels of oil.
“All Snickers made at Waco will be truly green,” said Todd Lachman, president of Mars Snackfood U.S., at the kick-off celebration in May, “not in color, but in the way in which they are manufactured. Snickers, Starburst and Skittles will all be made in a plant powered in large part by renewable energy.”
Replacing natural gas with methane rather than other green energy sources provides a double benefit for the city of Waco and the environment, since city landfills account for the second largest source of human-related methane emissions in the U.S.
“Using all the methane that the landfill produces solves a local and a global environmental problem,” said David Prybylowski, sustainability director for Mars Snackfood US. “Mars is removing methane emissions in the city, eliminating the risk of combustion and reducing powerful global warming gasses.”
The natural byproduct of decomposing organic matter, methane is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and is also highly flammable. Because of these physical and environmental concerns, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandates that municipalities and counties capture and mitigate methane gases once landfills reach a certain size. Mars helps Waco do just that by recycling this material for fuel.
From idea to reality
The project originally began as the idea of now-retired Mars associate Norm Burgess. As a Waco site engineer, Burgess developed a proposal for fueling the plant with landfill methane in the late 1990s. In time, all the necessary partners and pieces to make his idea a reality came together, culminating in May of this year when the methane-powered boilers were ignited.
The project is rooted in a public-private partnership between four players: The EPA provided a framework for the project through its Landfill Methane Outreach Program, which promotes the use of landfill methane as a renewable energy source. The City of Waco contracted with a private firm, Eagle Renewable Energy Group, LLC, to harvest and dispose of the methane, and Mars is the sole end user.
Methane is harvested through wells and piped from the city landfill to the Mars plant five miles away. At present, 56 wells supply 60% of the plant’s heating fuel needs, and there are plans to dig another 10 wells to increase capacity.
The response to this green initiative has been overwhelmingly positive at the local, state and federal levels. "This is one more big event in the rightful quest to make Waco Texas' greenest city,” wrote the Waco Tribune-Herald.
At the kick-off ceremony, a long line up of public officials praised the project, including Waco Mayor Virginia DuPuy; U.S. EPA Regional Administrator Richard Greene; Texas Representative Charles “Doc” Anderson; Deputy Secretary of State Coby Shorter III and representatives from the offices of U.S. Senator John Cornyn, U.S. Representative Chet Edwards and State Senator Kip Averitt.
“More than being a decision about the bottom line, this project is about taking responsibility for the future,” said Lachman, “for our business, for our associates and their children, for our community, and definitely for our environment.”
“At its core,” Lachman continued, “Mars, Incorporated is guided globally by five principles: Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom. These principles drive our business, and this renewable energy project has provided a terrific opportunity to put these beliefs into action.”
Mars is working with the EPA to identify additional opportunities to use municipal landfill methane to fuel the company’s U.S. operations.