By Linda Beaulieu; Montgomery Herald

Coffee grounds, eggshells, greasy paper towels and disposable diapers. All that stuff you can’t recycle that ends up buried in the Uwharrie Regional Landfill is getting a new, productive purpose - generating electricity.

Making use of the methane gas created by decomposing trash has always been part of the plan for Republic Services, rather than just flaring it off as has been done up to now. As of May 28, the methane has been used to generate electricity at the new Uwharrie Mountain Renewable Energy facility, across Landfill Road from the existing landfill and next to the old, unlined county landfill that is still producing methane many years after its closure.

The effort is a joint project of landfill operator Republic Services; facility operator DTE Biomass Energy, a division of Michigan-based DTE Energy; and Duke Energy Progress, which has a 15-year contract with DTE.