Why post an article from a year-and-a-half ago? This link has made the rounds of Reddit et. al. multiple times since it was first published. It seems neither "Hacker" related nor "News."
Neither did I.
That's the way information are spread. Duplicating them is a side effect and there's nothing wrong with that. If they are still interesting, people will upvote them again, and again...
hack = ENERGY Every hour, the first commercial version will turn 10 tons of auto waste—tires, plastic, vinyl—into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs to keep itself running).. Pringle created the machine about 10 years ago after he drove by a massive tire fire and thought about the energy being released. He went home and threw bits of a tire in a microwave emitter he’d been working with for another project. It turned to what looked like ash, but a few hours later, he returned and found a black puddle on the floor of the unheated workshop. Somehow, he’d struck oil.
Their first order is under construction in Rockford, Illinois. It’s a $5.1-million microwave machine the size of small bus called the Hawk, bound for an auto-recycler in Long Island, New York. More deals loom: The U.S. military may use Hawks in Iraq on waste such as water bottles and food containers. http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/innovator_2.html
idea = trawl for free plastic in oceans, zap with Pringle's machine, cleaner oceans, more energy, less waste..
Self preservation is one. [0]
One of the places mentioned is about 500Km north of me. [1] Here's a question for you. Aboriginals were first spotted at "Quandamooka" as Cpt. Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia in 1770. What did the locals do right that we are doing wrong? How did they manage to maintain the habitat for probably the 6K years the bay has existed and we (Australians) managed to bugger it up in less than 100 years?
"... This link has made the rounds of Reddit ..."
Since when has reddit been the bastion of informed comment?
[0] http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s743310.htm