‘A Recyclable Commodity’ – Martinsburg's New Waste-to-Energy Facility Turns Trash Into Fuel

Today, most of our trash ends up in landfills. In the United States, we produce more than 200 million tons of trash every single year. But what if we could turn some of that trash into fuel? Well, it turns out a large portion of Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan County residents’ garbage is being turned into fuel as we speak – even if they may not realize it.

Emily Dyson opens a gallon sized Ziploc bag full of soft, confetti like material. It has no smell, and it looks kind of like colorful, shredded fabric. This stuff was garbage, but now it’s been broken down, cleaned and can be used as a fuel source.

Dyson is the Director of Science Research and Development, Director of Safety, and formerly the Construction Manager at Entsorga West Virginia – a new waste-to-energy facility located in Martinsburg.

Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Emily Dyson, Director of Science Research and Development at Entsorga West Virginia.

There are similar efforts to turn trash into energy elsewhere in the United States, but Entsorga West Virginia is the first in the country to use a unique technology called HEBioT, or high-efficiency biological treatment. It speeds up the process – turning trash to fuel in less than three weeks.

Entsorga’s technology senses and separates garbage to collect bio-mass, plastics and other carbon based materials. Then, through the use of large fans and mulch, yes mulch, the garbage is cleaned, composted, then separated and shredded, and can then be used as fuel.

Entsorga is based in Italy with 14 locations around the world. Its West Virginia plant is the first Entsorga facility in North America. It employs 14 full-time employees, ranging in salaries from $13 to $25 an hour. 13 of the 14 employees are West Virginia residents.

Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Apple Valley Waste’s garbage trucks drive up to these doors and are emptied inside. The doors are specially sealed to contain much of the garbage smells within the facility. The ladybug is Entsorga’s mascot.

Dyson said Entsorga’s technology will solve both waste and fuel problems but is only one piece of the puzzle.

“From a waste perspective, there’s not going to be one technology that’s going to solve the waste problems of the U.S. From a fuel perspective, there’s not going to be one fuel, one power source that’s going to fix the energy issues that we face here, but you might as well be using waste, because that’s a definite recyclable commodity. Everybody makes waste,” she said.

Dyson said nearly 80 percent of garbage that comes to Entsorga will be diverted from a landfill, and at least half of that will be turned into fuel – fuel that will be used at a local cement factory in Berkeley County. Entsorga’s fuel will also replace a portion of coal used there.

“It burns cleaner than coal. The cement plant will use up to 30 percent offset, or supplement of their coal,” she explained.

Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
This is what garbage becomes after the Entsorga process. This confetti-like material can be burned as a fuel source. It’s been shredded, cleaned and is safe to touch.

Entsorga West Virginia opened its doors in March 2019, and it’s having a considerable effect on lessening the amount of garbage going into a landfill.

Clint Hogbin, Chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, and who invited Entsorga to locate in West Virginia, said, in the month of April, the facility saw more than 1,000 tons of waste that either became fuel or was recycled at the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority.

“That’s an immediate 10 percent landfill reduction in [Entsorga’s] first month; for the entire Eastern Panhandle,” Hogbin said. “If you add all the waste stream of the Eastern Panhandle, that’s in their first month; its immediate 10 percent landfill reduction.”

But, let’s back up. How does garbage become the fluffy stuff in that Ziploc bag? Here’s how it works…

Residents in Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties take their garbage out to the curb once a week, like anywhere else. But only Apple Valley Waste  customers see their trash sent to Entsorga.

Their trash is picked up and brought to the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority along Grapevine Road in Martinsburg.

The Entsorga facility sits just behind the Solid Waste Authority on 12 acres of land.

The garbage trucks are weighed, and then the contents are emptied into the Entsorga building.

After the trash is dropped off, Entsorga’s HEBioT technology begins its work. There’s no human intervention in the Entsorga process, just the employees who operate the machines and watch the monitors.

Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Garbage is spun inside a trommel to help sort out the various items.

A large screen shows multiple camera views of the machines at work — spinning, cleaning, or shredding the garbage.

Dyson said the waste will sit in what’s called the bio-oxidation hall for a couple weeks, while a large fan system sucks and blows air through the ventilation system.

“And that is what accelerates that composting because we’re drying that material out fast. What normally takes three to nine months, we’re doing in that 10 to 14, 16 days,” she said.

Mulch plays a big part of the ventilation process by absorbing and breaking down the garbage smells. It helps to clean and compost the trash that’ll eventually become fuel.

Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Mulch and large fans help to clean and compost the garbage as it is processed into fuel.

But getting Entsorga to locate in West Virginia has not been without its struggles. It took ten years to get all the permits cleared – in part because the facility was a brand new thing for the state.

And there was also some pushback from community members.

“The first public hearing, there was a lot of people, there was a lot of questions,” Dyson explained.

She said most of the concerns came from a lack of understanding about how the technology works.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around [the technology] unless you see it,” she said.

There was also some opposition by landfill companies.

“If you’re a landfill; if you’re a facility that’s going to lose a lot of intake because of this facility, you might be upset, and you might get involved and slow it down. So, we had some of that,” Clint Hogbin said.

Hogbin said the Eastern Panhandle needed a waste-to-energy facility, simply because of the rate at which the area is growing – to find an alternative to landfilling. And he said he hopes Entsorga West Virginia will be an example for the rest of the country.

“I’m hoping those solid waste decision makers will come to Martinsburg, visit the facility, and I’m hoping in that way, the ripple effect would be that West Virginia changes the direction of management of solid waste,” Hogbin said. “It might be nice to be first at something.”

Entsorga West Virginia’s fuel product is being utilized by one local cement plant in Martinsburg called Argos. Argos is also an Italian company.

But both Hogbin and Dyson say there are other cement companies who may contract with them in the future, and there’s the possibility that other companies may have an interest in the product.

Ground Broken on West Virginia Trash-to-Fuel Facility

Ground has been broken on a trash-to-fuel facility in West Virginia.

Media outlets report a ceremony was held Wednesday for Entsorga West Virginia’s 48,000-square-foot facility in Martinsburg.

Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority chairman Clint Hogbin says the $25 million facility will be a “game-changer” for solid-waste recovery in the Eastern Panhandle.

In August the state Economic Development Authority board in Charleston authorized a bond to finance the project.

The plant will use a mechanical biological treatment system to organize incoming waste without the need for employees to sort it by hand. Entsorga says the facility will divert municipal solid waste from landfills and use it to produce alternative fuels.

The plant is expected to accept up to about 10,000 tons of solid waste per month.

Italian Company Could Change the Way W.Va. Looks at Waste

Landfilling has been the main source of getting rid of waste for centuries. But a new technology coming to West Virginia may change how we think of waste disposal, and in the long run, help our environment.

Entsorga is an Italian resource recovery company that has been around since 1997. About four years ago, the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority was looking for ways to promote a cleaner environment and find a safer and more efficient way to dispose of waste. …Entsorga ended up finding them.

After three years of waiting, Entsorga received approval from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to begin constructing a new resource recovery facility later this year on property owned by the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority. The facility will take anywhere from 65 to 75 percent of the refuse they collect and turn it into fuel instead of putting it in the ground.

“Essentially what you take waste, and you use it as a resource or you use to make energy,” said Clint Hogbin, the chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, “This is garbage that will be picked up on the street, no differently then it’s being picked up today. And instead of the truck going to a landfill, the truck will go to a 4 acre building, and unload its waste inside of a building, where mechanical equipment, electro-mechanical equipment will sort and process that waste and prepare it to be used for fuel.”

The Berkeley County facility will be the first Entsorga plant in the country and the first resource recovery facility in West Virginia using a technology called HeBIOT.

Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Acreage just behind the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority’s main office. The Entsorga facility will be built just beyond this fence.

HeBIOT is an acronym. It stands for high-efficiency biological treatment, and it’s a patented technology, patent by Entsorga,” Hogbin said, “It uses the biology of waste if you will, the decomposition of waste, to prepare the waste to be used for a fuel.”

Hogbin says while there are other resource recovery facilities in the United States, this facility is the only one that will use the HeBIOT technology. The waste is turned into a confetti-like material by use of high-tech machines operated by humans within a clean room. The material is then dried and can be burned for fuel and used as a replacement for some non-renewable resources like coal. And that’s what Hogbin says may keep the state from embracing the new fueling system.

“We were worried about there being some concern, particularly from downstate, about the impact on coal, because this would be competing with coal,” Hogbin noted.

With the push from the federal government to reduce carbon emission, however, Hogbin says recycling refuse is a viable option for not just West Virginia, but the entire country.

Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Clint Hogbin, chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, stands in the field soon to be under construction.

“Emissions from burning of this material has been studied. It’s been studied by Entsorga. It’s also been studied by the United States Environmental Protection Agency who literally sent this board a letter, advising us their opinion of burning this material was significantly lower or equal to the emissions of burning coal.”

Entsorga has an agreement with another Italian company called Essroc, also located in Berkeley County. The confetti-like material produced at the Entsorga plant, will be sent to Essroc, where this fuel will be used to power the plant that makes cement.

Apple Valley Waste Services will also play a role by providing Entsorga with the garbage it will use to make the fuel.

Hogbin says once the Entsorga facility is up-and-running, it would employ around 12 people, with salaries ranging from forty to sixty-thousand dollars a year.

Garbage-to-Fuel Plant Coming to W.Va.

A European method for converting garbage to fuel is coming to West Virginia. The Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority has signed an agreement to lease part of its property to the Italian company Entsorga. The company will build a $19 million facility there.

The mixed waste resource recovery facility will sit on 12 acres next to the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority’s Grapevine Rd. recycling center.

“Entsorga has a patented technology where waste that’s picked up at the curb and normally would be taken to the landfill is redirected to a building,” Clint Hogbin, BCSWA chairman, said.

The garbage is then sorted and processed into a product that can be burned like coal and natural gas to create BTU’s. According to Entsorga’s web site the product is a clean-burning alternative that large energy consumers like steel mills, power plants and cement plants can use in place of or with fossil fuels.

Hogbin estimates the mixed waste resource recovery facility will reduce the amount of trash from Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties sent to the landfill by 65 to 75 percent.

Hogbin said the facility will separate out recyclables and items that won’t generate high BTU’s, things like glass bottles and aluminum cans.

“What are left after those items that are pulled out are the items that are cleaned, dried and shredded and ready to be used as a substitute to coal,” he said.

Hogbin said Entsorga is coming to Berkeley County because there are several locations within a couple hundred miles where the fuel can be sold, including the Italian-owned ESSROC cement plant in Martinsburg, which already burns coal.

Hogbin said the Entsorga facility will employ up to nine people and there will be additional spinoff jobs once it’s open.

Hogbin hopes the new facility will demonstrate it’s possible to find new ways to deal with garbage and everything doesn’t have to go to a landfill. Entsorga plans to begin building sometime in the spring or summer.

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