{"id":19002,"date":"2015-11-04T12:01:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=19002"},"modified":"2015-11-04T12:01:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:01:25","slug":"industrial-waste-a-tool-for-capturing-carbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/industrial-waste-a-tool-for-capturing-carbon\/","title":{"rendered":"Industrial Waste: A Tool For Capturing Carbon?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Our typical reaction to industrial waste products like coal ash<\/a>? Stop producing it by finding another, cleaner energy source<\/a>. That’s a viable long-term strategy, but (unfortunately) we’re not going to stop burning coal tomorrow. Nor are we going to stop making steel or aluminum, which also produce some pretty nasty byproducts.<\/p>\n While the wastes from these processes can take a number of different forms – ash, sludge, or mud – the all do the same thing when they meet up with water<\/a>: “…rapidly create bleach-like solutions” that pose a threat to water sources, and the plants and animals that depend on them. That quality also makes the normal means of disposing of these materials – landfilling them – problematic, as they’ll likely meet up with water and turn into an\u00a0alkaline leachate that works its way into the watershed.<\/p>\n