Would be cool if the generated heat could be harnessed.

Wow, government bureaucrats discovered composting.

Wonder how this process would work in extremes of climate like the tropics or in very northern locations.

Shazam999: Wow, government bureaucrats discovered composting.

Difference being that these guys managed to turn stuff like tires into soil.

But I'm sure you know this, having RTFA.

dragonchild: Shazam999: Wow, government bureaucrats discovered composting.

Difference being that these guys managed to turn stuff like tires into soil.

But I'm sure you know this, having RTFA.

Yeah, you need to think about turning tires into soil, and think about whether it's actually possible.

dragonchild: Difference being that these guys managed to turn stuff like tires into soil.

Yeah, and things like tires and shingles breaking down are the catch here. And why my BS detector is sounding.

M-G: dragonchild: Difference being that these guys managed to turn stuff like tires into soil.

Yeah, and things like tires and shingles breaking down are the catch here. And why my BS detector is sounding.

It's BS. They're being fleeced.

Farking hell people are morons.

M-G: Yeah, and things like tires and shingles breaking down are the catch here. And why my BS detector is sounding.

I'm responding to Shazam999's "durrr government bureaucrats discovered composting" snark. It's rather teabagger in its irrelevance. It's derpy because the claim in TFA goes way beyond simple backyard composting. If some company claimed to have found a way to compost leaves, it wouldn't have made the news and no government would've been interested either. That it's spurious is beside that particular point.

While I don't think it's beyond the realm of impossibility to engineer a microbe or process that breaks down isoprene, the red flag in my head is that there are no details given on any special processes that would've been necessary. If "Bio-Environmental Resource Recovery International" is using genetically modified microbes, for example, it wasn't even mentioned in the article. It could be that BERRI (huh?) is a fraud, but it's impossible to tell the way the reporter derped TFA.

WelldeadLink: /wondering why the deer was dead but not the armadillo.

Yeah, I was wondering that myself. I'm shocked that a live armadillo turned into soil. It's like magic!

dragonchild: M-G: Yeah, and things like tires and shingles breaking down are the catch here. And why my BS detector is sounding.

I'm responding to Shazam999's "durrr government bureaucrats discovered composting" snark. It's rather teabagger in its irrelevance. It's derpy because the claim in TFA goes way beyond simple backyard composting. If some company claimed to have found a way to compost leaves, it wouldn't have made the news and no government would've been interested either. That it's spurious is beside that particular point.

While I don't think it's beyond the realm of impossibility to engineer a microbe or process that breaks down isoprene, the red flag in my head is that there are no details given on any special processes that would've been necessary. If "Bio-Environmental Resource Recovery International" is using genetically modified microbes, for example, it wasn't even mentioned in the article. It could be that BERRI (huh?) is a fraud, but it's impossible to tell the way the reporter derped TFA.

Keep backpedaling dude.

If someone did "engineer a microbe" (with those handy microbe engineering machines they sell at Target), and somehow made a few trillion of them (you are, after all, plopping them into a big pile of stuff, and they have to work quickly), it'd cost a bit more than the $25/tonne they're wanting to recoup costs.

Look, even what their scientist said is wrong:

"It's changing its structure and it's changing its form," Carpenter said. "It's becoming dirt, and that is what we want."

No, it's not dirt. It's compost. Compost is not dirt. Dirt is mostly silt and some humus. You cannot grow things in compost long term, because compost keeps decomposing even after application.

Shazam999: Keep backpedaling dude.

Backpedal from where to where? I'll freely admit I don't know much about composting at all. I'm not a biologist or even a gardener. The only composting I do is in my fridge. If someone tries to troll me on the intricacies of composting, they'll probably succeed. I get the feeling that composting tires isn't as simple as throwing some slime on them, but I never had a reason to believe it was impossible either -- and if someone claimed to do it I'd be more curious than paranoid.

But I don't see what that has to do with "durr government discovered composting". That was a teabagger WTF moment out of thin air. Regardless of whether or not these guys are frauds, they got the government's interest because they claimed they could save them money and it sounds like they're taking it seriously. If this was about composting leaves and leftovers the government wouldn't have even picked up the damn phone, much less get the media involved.

I remember reading an article a while back about some dudes who were using microbes or whatever to turn tires into oil, so this isnt totally shocking. I can see this working well in areas like Florida or Washington wheres theres steady rainfaill. Other areas, not so much.

I wish that they'd explained the process a bit more though, cuz I really do want to believe.

They composted all that? Those fellas could have had a pretty good time in Vegas with all that stuff...

dragonchild: M-G: Yeah, and things like tires and shingles breaking down are the catch here. And why my BS detector is sounding.

I'm responding to Shazam999's "durrr government bureaucrats discovered composting" snark. It's rather teabagger in its irrelevance. It's derpy because the claim in TFA goes way beyond simple backyard composting. If some company claimed to have found a way to compost leaves, it wouldn't have made the news and no government would've been interested either. That it's spurious is beside that particular point.

While I don't think it's beyond the realm of impossibility to engineer a microbe or process that breaks down isoprene, the red flag in my head is that there are no details given on any special processes that would've been necessary. If "Bio-Environmental Resource Recovery International" is using genetically modified microbes, for example, it wasn't even mentioned in the article. It could be that BERRI (huh?) is a fraud, but it's impossible to tell the way the reporter derped TFA.

Lets for a minute assume that microbes exist to chew up everything. What really gets me is:

"...the rich soil produced had only trace amounts of heavy metals and other toxins that were deliberately put into the composting piles."

Where did the heavy metals go?

RogermcAllen: "...the rich soil produced had only trace amounts of heavy metals and other toxins that were deliberately put into the composting piles."

Where did the heavy metals go?

I think that can be read one of two ways -- either it meant there was no increase or decrease of heavy metal content in the pile of garbage that they knew of in advance, which is kind of a really stupid "no duh". It doesn't mean shiat unless you know how much is in the garbage itself, which could've been carefully selected to avoid this problem. Or, they added trace heavy metals in addition to whatever might've been in the garbage, and the company is claiming everything else magically disappeared. Which is downright outrageous, considering microbes aren't capable of nuclear fission. The best they can do is convert a heavy metal into a non-toxic compound, but it should still be picked up. Either way, there's holes in the test criteria you could drive a truck through.

My suspicion is that it's #1; it's the reporter who derped, that there was just no net increase in heavy metals (because none were introduced), but it also means there's nothing to see here. So I kind of just moved past that part.

I want to hope, but it's just an awful, horribly written article so I just wind up confused.