While mowing my grass yesterday, my thoughts drifted to biofuels, and it made me wonder. Has any group studied the feasability of turning grass clippings into biofuel? Think about how many millions of acres of grass we maintain religiously. We spend an inordinate amount of time and resources watering, fertilizing, and clipping our lawns. Every week I generate about 30 to 40 pounds of clippings that gets thrown into the dumpster to be hauled off by the garbage truck.

Half of the infrastucture is in place. We have millions of volunteers growing and harvesting the material. The other half of the supply infrastructure would be easy enough to implement. In my neighborhood a garbage truck and a recycling truck make weeky rounds. A 3rd truck to collect grass clippings (and perhaps other yard waste is not beyond the realm of possibilty.

The hard part is turning that raw material into biofuel. If its feasible to do so, the material would cost very little to collect. Farmland would be no longer need to be converted to growing strictly biomass. We could all feel less guilty about the time and money we spend cultivating our lawns.

Add to this an article I read about a local forestry company in my area who is going to start growing grass amidst the trees for a one-time per year harvest. This convinces me grass must be an acceptable source for biofuel.

I'm going to dig into this a bit more, but any comments would be welcome.

Steve G.