Environment: Recycling Garbage

In goes garbage, out comes fuel oil.

A Vonnegut fantasy? No. Several companies are engaged in research to make just such a machine. Now Garrett Research & Development Co., a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, claims that it has solved the technical problems and is ready to build a 50-ton-per-day demonstration plant in San Diego County. The project depends on whether or not the county and the Federal Government will ante up the $3,000,000 necessary to build the plant.

The process by which garbage can be converted into oil is called pyrolysis, the use of heat to transform materials. It was by this...

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