One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Old proverb.

Waste is also known as rubbish, trash, garbage, junk, or litter. Humans produce and dispose of waste. With a global population of 7 billion and growing we are producing more and more waste. Human behavior and industrial development are directly linked to waste materials. Luckily, more and more forms of waste have economical value and can be recycled into new products.

When it gets dark in a city like Buenos Aires a new world wakes up and an army of garbage collectors roams the city to collect waste with a potential economic value

(e. g., wood, copper, aluminum, PET bottles, etc.). If you are living an envir­onmentally responsible life and travel regularly you can witness how much waste mankind is producing, especially in developing countries, where waste remains waste, due to a lack of knowledge or capital.

Luckily, technology can now convert several waste types like woodchips, seed­cake from plants like olives, Jatropha and even municipal waste into valuable types of energy like biodiesel, biogas, ethanol, and even biokerosene.

Figure 22.1 provides a good picture of how much waste is produced per head in the European Union and, more importantly, what proportion of the personal waste is recycled.

• Amazingly, the United Kingdom produces 592 kg waste per person per year, well above the EU average of 577 kg. On top of that honor, only 18% of this waste is recycled, well below the EU average of 36.4%.

• Greece is the worst offender in terms of landfill, dumping 90% of its municipal waste.

• In Holland, 64.4% of all waste is recycled — the highest rate in Europe.

• In squeaky clean Singapore the recycling rate is an amazing 57%. What is the figure in your city?

We have not even touched Africa, Asia, the United States, or South America. You can now understand that the potential to recycle waste is truly gigantic. I receive offers from Brazil and Malaysia to collect wood waste out of forests and pelletize it. We are doing on-site studies and hope to realize these projects in the near future.

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