Apparently taking a page out of China's book [5], Factually reports [6] the Philadelphia Federal Reserve office (apparently aware of the worthlessness of their fiat currency) sends old currency to local power plants, where it's burned for electricity. As WSJ reports, [7] The Fed destroys more than 5,000 tons of U.S. currency a year - most of it once went to landfills, but the central bank has pushed for years to go green with all that green. It appears we have come a long way from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s 1953 annual report [8] when it boasted it had "money to burn."
From 1953...
[9]
As Gizmodo reports [6],
Philadelphia is literally burning money to keep the lights on. And that's a good thing! They used to just shred it and send it to landfills, letting all that energy go to waste.
...
"Rather than just sitting in a landfill, it's producing electricity for residents in the Delaware Valley, here in our district," an official at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia proudly told the Wall Street Journal.
Other municipalities around the country have similar currency incineration programs, including Los Angeles County, where they burn as much as 500 tons of money per year. I suppose the image of burning money is a good reminder to turn the lights off when you leave a room. Your dollar bills are literally going up in smoke.
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