For example, Unilever was able to save $220 million with the implementation of its "Zero-Waste-to-Landfill" program.
Meeting this goal will require real reductions: faster adoption of energy-saving technologies; improved recovery of methane that currently escapes from coal mines, gas pipelines and landfills; and programs to improve forestry and agriculture so they absorb more carbon dioxide.
There is ample opportunity for energy-producing projects at more landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's Landfill Methane Outreach Program and officials and groups in the three states.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Environment and Renewable Resources has studied and identified the negative impacts of operating landfills, but no program has been implemented to determine the cause effect relation of these impacts or to design strategies to counteract with the serious environmental and health risks generated.
The E.P.A. outreach program said landfills that were likely candidates for methane capture could add 27.3 megawatts in New York, 3.1 megawatts in New Jersey — where most landfills are already exploiting methane — and 7.3 megawatts in Connecticut.
While it's possible to run a methane-capture program at a landfill, up to two-thirds of the gas may still be lost.
We think that grass deserves to spend its life stuck between a Styrofoam cup and a printer cartridge in some landfill in Virginia?" The compost program is on a list of proposed cuts the Council is seeking to reinstate, said Councilman Michael McMahon, who is the chairman of the committee on sanitation and solid waste management.
The new figures come from data gathered by landfill managers under a government program mandated since 2010.
In Arizona, the Bureau of Land Management has begun a program to repurpose landfills and abandoned mines for renewable energy.
The municipality can, by undertaking an irreversible investment, adopt a flexible program which integrates the existing landfill strategy with recycling, keeping the option to switch back to landfilling, if profitable.
Now imagine that many fewer plastic bottles headed for recycling or, even worse, the landfill in the absence of recycling programs.
