From my water and waste water treatment engineer classes a few years ago. Most landfills solids range between 30-40% organic material because of the food people throw away. For the most part the capturing of the methane gas in solid waste land fills through leech lines strategically placed is very inefficent. The methane is pushed into generators and the electricty is sold back on the power grid.
If you have a batch reactor or more perferably a continous flow reactor (CSTR) and control the environmental conditions and catalyst, the bacteria can produce specific products from all kinds of organic material. The process most likely will be anaerobic since it is what is used typically to produce alcohols and methane gases. Aerobic reactions are generally between 4-10 times faster than anaerobic reactions and the products efficiency will range depending on which process. Most wastewater treatment plants focus on aroebic process since they are concerned with breaking up all organic material into Carbon dioxide gas and the remaining sludge is non biodegradable organics and other solids. PH, temperature, oxygen, and the enzymes or cataylst and type of bacteria is very important factors in the process.
Typical problems that occur sometimes when you have the food for the bacteria and you want a specific product to be degraded or created, sometimes the bacteria will stop breaking down or slow down in the efficiency of the product. That is one reason why wastewater plants recycle their bacteria. The thought is if the bacteria that is recycled you have starved those specific bacteria before resupplying them with additional food.
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