{"id":5817,"date":"2022-12-01T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02b18ec330002605"},"modified":"2022-12-01T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T13:00:00","slug":"bitcoin-mining-can-profit-from-garbage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/bitcoin-mining-can-profit-from-garbage","title":{"rendered":"Turning Garbage Into Digital Gold: The Rise Of Landfill Bitcoin Mining"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Powering bitcoin mining machines with literal garbage is an emerging trend within the mining sector as a crop of new companies focus on harnessing this abundant and otherwise wasted energy resource. Contrary to the prevalent political narrative that bitcoin mining<\/a> destroys the planet, the efforts of these landfill miners demonstrate that nothing could be further from the truth. <\/p>\n

In fact, the net positive effects of these mining teams are enough to silence environmental critics forever. This article explores the early stages of companies building mining operations at landfills and looks at the potential opportunities that this resource \u2014 read: trash \u2014 presents for Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin\u2019s Emerging Trash Trend<\/h2>\n

Most instances of discussing landfills and bitcoin together usually involve very early adopters who mined absurd amounts of cheap bitcoin on their computers and subsequently lost or discarded their hard drives that contained fortunes. One early bitcoin miner is even planning an expensive landfill excavation project<\/a> to retrieve half a billion dollars in misplaced digital gold. Another landfill made headlines because of its response to an inordinately large amount of \u201cincompressible foam<\/a>\u201d that one bitcoin mining company tried to dump.<\/p>\n

These crazy stories aside, today\u2019s bitcoin miners target landfills for power to earn new bitcoin, not as targets for retrieving old ones. Vespene Energy<\/a> and XcelPlus International<\/a> are two of the earliest entrants into this new segment of the bitcoin mining industry. I have heard of other similar projects currently building in stealth will join them following public announcements coming in the next year or two. In a recent study on the environmental effects of bitcoin mining, the White House directly mentioned<\/a> landfill-focused bitcoin mining efforts. <\/p>\n

But not all approaches to landfill-powered bitcoin mining are the same. Vespene, for example, \u201cuses landfill methane to fuel bitcoin mining,\u201d according to its website<\/a>. This business model can quickly affect a non-trivial amount of methane emissions reduction at scale since landfill waste is responsible for about 11% of global methane emissions<\/a>. XcelPlus, by comparison, uses plasma gasification<\/a> machines to generate thermal energy<\/a> and also earn disposal fees for the trash it receives from landfills on top of bitcoin mining rewards \u2014 a nice two-for-one deal!<\/p>\n

Quantifying The Global Garbage Supply<\/h2>\n

So, exactly how abundant is trash as a resource for bitcoin mining? The short answer is: very.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a bit of data to detail just how plentiful the world\u2019s supply of garbage is:<\/p>\n