Fresh Kills Landfill Transformation

• The city of New York closed its largest landfill, Fresh Kills, in 2001.
• The landfill is being transformed into a state-of-the-art eco-park, and will open in phases over the next 30 years.
• The landfill produces enough methane gas each day to heat 30,000 homes, and will quite likely continue to do so for the next 10 years.
• The garbage stored at Fresh Kills falls into the category of “municipal solid waste.”
• It contains both organic material, like food waste and paper products, and inorganic material, like plastics and electronics.
• As the organic material breaks down over time, anaerobic micro-organisms helping the process along create what is known as landfill gas: about half methane and half carbon dioxide, along with a small amount of water vapor.
• The city processes the landfill gas on site at the Landfill Gas Purification Plant, and then sells the resulting four million cubic feet of refined, “pipeline-quality” gas to the local utility, National Grid, for distribution to residential and commercial customers throughout Staten Island.

Learn about the transformation of New York's largest landfill, Fresh Kills, into an eco-park and its impact on energy production through methane gas. Understand the composition of municipal solid waste and the process of generating and purifying landfill gas.