There have been major strides in producing everything from sandals to military hardware in more eco-friendly ways. Likewise, the reduction of waste has also been improved, through both new technology and behavioral changes. But perhaps the most intriguing sector of the "sustainability industry" is the one populated by companies and organizations capturing waste and converting it into useful, carbon-neutral resources.
It's well known that organic matter makes up more than half of household waste, and that maintaining a backyard compost pile, though sometimes labour-intensive, is a rewarding way to reduce your garbage output and create rich garden soil at the same time. This basic concept is being built into a powerhouse opportunity as the price of oil continues to climb through the roof. On Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada, one small composting company is growing like it's been using its own organic fertilizer. Processes have been developed by R-Earth to convert organic waste (conveniently delivered to its facilities by municipal waste service), into both crop fertilizer and biofuels. Electricity can also be generated from organic waste to bio-gas, and then into electricity. Using municipal waste for combustion isn't always that clean, as municipal waste often contains toxic materials. But since R-Earth collects and uses organic, sorted-at-source materials only (largely from household curbside collection and restaurants), the feedstock is essentially green by nature.
One of the most tragic examples of turning resources into waste concerns our freshwater supplies. Around the world, flushing freshwater from source to outfall with record expediency has been the norm for years. But various examples of water recycling, treatment, and conversion are now taking place. Another BC-based firm, Fidelis Resources, has done the necessary homework to co-ordinate different wastewater resource capture opportunities into a water-tight, integrated business case for treating wastes as resources, and not the other way around. Water passing through our homes and businesses can be captured, treated, and redirected to many non-potable uses, such as agriculture, street-cleaning, fire hydrants, toilets, and industrial processes.
Our own "wastes" have great embodied energy, starting with the ambient heat present in the sewer systems. This heat can be piped back and transferred to indoor spaces. The bio-solids can be composted into nutrient-rich fertilizer, or gasified into natural gas.
The revenue potential of Fidelis' IRM (Integrated Resource Management) process is significant, as are the opportunities to save on traditional infrastructure costs dealing with the whole freshwater supply chain, from reservoir expansions to sewage treatment and disposal. The technology is also scalable, being deployed only as needed, according to a municipality's actual growth.
Perhaps the ultimate example of a waste-to-resources technology is being developed by Startech, and involves turning virtually anything into energy by subjecting it to super-hot plasma. Plasma is essentially just electrically charged gas, and the company claims it is able to reach temperatures of 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit inside the main chamber of its technology. They are replicating what is believed to take place inside stars, hence the name. Waste is fed into the chamber and exposed to the high-temperature plasma, which actually breaks the material's structure down to its basic molecular components. Based in Wilton, Connecticut, the company is still in early stages, but a number of recent press releases indicate activity.
Opportunities to change our thinking around what waste is, and how we make it and deal with it, are everywhere and are critical if true sustainability is to become the bedrock of any new social and economic progress. As Fidelis' Resources principal Patrick Lucey says, "Nature doesn't make any waste."
