You mean my bucket of earthworms is now totally passe? They've been composting my kitchen garbage for decades and I don't have to plug anything into a wall socket. No proprietary nothing needed.

Man, japan gets everything first. Everything. And its not like you could bring one over and just plug it in, since the sockets are different

neat idea, but i think it really fails the "environmental accounting."

it basically uses electricity to help return "waste" carbon to the atmosphere. i'm sure that includes immediate methane release as part of the decomposition.

a double-whammy.

if you believe global warming, it is better to send that stuff to a landfill where it will be sequestered indefinitely (or future generations mine it).

Is it just me or does "Plasmacluster Ions" (TM) sound rather silly?

The environmental cost-benefit is probably not great (95W per composter!), but it sure beats sending it to landfill. There you still end up with methane in the atmosphere, and leachate that's hard to deal with. I don't mind burying plastics and paper, but organics have to be separated.

It would be interesting if these could be built big enough for an entire neighbourhood.

Good idea, Daniel. Maybe if a city-sized one were built, the methane (or whatever gases are produced in the composting) could be burned to provide some of the energy needed to run the composter. I'm not sure if that's feasible, though.

They could be built, in Japan they already do garbage methane collection on a larger scale.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/business/022205_moneyscope_methane.html

Problem here is getting the city to front the money to build it, getting past the nimbys who don't want it near them and then getting past the oil,gas and coal lobbists that will argue against it.

You know, I rag on anti-environmentalists for their irrational denial of global warming.

I guess I have to at least gently insist with the "good side" that properly built landfills are good:

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2000/skog00b.pdf

I used the term "environmental accounting" above, it is a difficult task at times, but if you are going to be a honest environmentalists, you have to go with the best solution, not the comfortable one.

BTW, if this thing really draws 95w (even semi-frequently), then it is going to use more electricity every year than my 30-inch lcd tv!

I've got a Syntax Olevia, max 145w, and together with my dvd player I'm getting this power draw:
running 261 hours and 0 minutes consumes 4.37 kwh,

average consumption 16.743 watts,

KWH per year = 146.67,

$13.75 per year at 0.09375 cents min charge,
$25.00 per year at 0.17042 cents max charge.

Environmental accounting is an interesting proposition, however we can't simply count CO2 equivalents alone. The mainstream environmental thinking as far as garbage goes is simple: (rethink), reduce, separate the toxics (batteries, paints, cleaners), move on to large volume and easily separated items (household organics, paper, glass, metals). Considerations of habitat, cost of alternatives... the environmental cost-benefit isn't straightforward accounting if there ever was such a thing.

Putting benign items in a landfill to be able to sequester carbon simply isn't worth making a toxic mess. The best solutions simplify the problem into smaller parts rather than make it intractable.

This gadget is interesting in that it does keep nearly half the garbage out of landfills. That reduces a lot of unnecessary transport, and increases the useful life of landfills, making them less stinky, hazardous and easier to "mine" later on.

It is hardly an optimal situation- the cost of producing and running the units is probably too high compared to larger scale alternatives. The neighbourhood approach is one I suggested after being disappointed by the smell of green bins in my city- a convenient drop location that did not smell or require as much transportation would be great.

Overall, this is impressive gadgetry, and I hope it will get people thinking more about alternative ways of dealing with half our garbage.

Test ... last attempt rejected.

Trying again. Daniel, I absolutely agree that if we are going to attempt environmental accounting, we have to try to follow it out to the details, the best we can.

I put a post about the difficulty of this on my blog.

I don't think it is really fair though to assume leaky lanfills. I'm sure there are some bad landfills out there, but the qustion of what good designs exist (or are possible).

As a comparison, we wouldn't comdem electric cars, just because Hummers polute unreasonably.

Anyway if you haven't had a chance to scan that PDF, please do so. It reinforces just how long various CO2 "stores" last.

As an apartment dweller (previously a Japan dweller) who doesn't have space for a real compost pile, I think this is a good alternative. It sounds like what you end up with is fertilizer - exactly what I want for my plants. Since I'm vegetarian, this would cover most of what I can't recycle. The energy cost is high, but I already don't own a TV or a car, so I'd still be below par.

Here's an alternative to Sharp's kitchen composter that a) is available in the US, b) uses a fermented organic matter, potentially equivalent to Sharp's Bio Mix and c) doesn't seem use electricity at all.

http://tinyurl.com/5sw99
(Gaiam online store)

Modern landfills are designed for a mixed waste or organic and inorganics. It allows them to achieve an optimal breakdown of the wastes and maximize the production of methane which is collected and used to generate electricity.

It seems that most posters are familiar with old landfill technology.