Dive summary:

• David Robau, a scientist with the U.S. Air Force, is going around the country showing off the newest technology in the waste to energy industry; by using Plasma Gasification, municipal garbage is devoured, metals are recycled, toxic contaminants are eliminated and electricity and usable byproducts are left over— all with drastic reductions in emissions.
• About 350 kilowatts of electricity can be produced from about 10 tons of garbage each day.
• Advocates claim the process can break chemical bonds and destroy medical waste, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), asbestos and hydrocarbons, some of which can be hazardous if put into landfills or traditional incinerators.
• Some environmentalists are not totally convinced by the process, one major concern is that the ability to fully dispose of waste will discourage recycling and the development of renewable products and the gasification will still result in toxic substances like dioxins.

From the article:

David Robau tours the country promoting a system that sounds too good to be true: It devours municipal garbage, recycles metals, blasts toxic contaminants and produces electricity and usable byproducts — all with drastic reductions in emissions.

Mr. Robau, an environmental scientist for the Air Force, has been promoting a method that was developed with the Air Force to dispose of garbage with neither the harmful byproducts of conventional incineration nor the environmental impact of transporting and burying waste. It is one of several innovative techniques that the United States military has been researching to provide alternatives to the open-pit burns that some veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars say have made them ill. ...