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Greater recycling and materials re-use could increase the size of the global economy by an additional $2 Trillion or more over the next two to three decades, according to the International Resource Panel, part of the UN’s Environment Programme. Given this is equivalent to the GDP of Italy, additional recycling/re-use initiatives could thus add the equivalent of the entire economy of Italy!

Ecogensus believes the opportunity could be even greater, as previous estimates were based on certain assumptions and recycling rates that could in fact be exceeded by advances in technology. A new wave of manufacturing jobs that are based up turning recycled materials into higher-value products (i.e. “upcycling) are emerging, and Ecogensus is helping drive this resource revolution.

By increasing the overall economics of recycling (since Rhino Recyclers are able to create value from the residual post-sorted waste that otherwise is landfilled), we may be able to bring new waste management infrastructure and recycling to the developing world – going so far as to creating new ‘micro-economies’ centered around new recycling facilities where local communities can collect and bring waste.

According to the consultancy Circle Economy, the global economy reuses just 8.6% of the 100 billion tons of material that are consumed every year. An enormous opportunity to prevent loss and recover value exists, provided that societies promote the modernizing of waste management infrastructure and recycling alternatives to waste disposal.

Our solutions are focused on achieving maximum rates of recycling on a distributed basis. We believe it is possible to achieve an end to landfilling and dumping. There are already instances of societies reaching 96-97% recycling rates (which includes energy recovery/EfW plants).

With new, efficient, equipment-based recycling solutions, advances in sustainable building materials, and a rapidly scalable business model, we believe Ecogensus holds the key to a global end to landfilling.

A January 2020 study published in Frontiers in Public Health noted that “Solid Wastes Provide Breeding Sites, Burrows, and Food for Biological Disease Vectors, and Urban Zoonotic Reservoirs”. Landfills and dumps actually breed new zoonotic pathogens (which can result in new epidemics and pandemics). Birds and other vectors then bring these pathogens back to communities.

Landfills and dumps can also act as disease propagators. A report in 2018 from the U.S. Government’s EPA National Homeland Security Research Center stated that natural disease outbreaks, intentional and unintentional pathogen releases can result in infectious viruses becoming inoculated in landfills. The report found that viral persistence can last for days to months, including in landfill leachate. It was also noted that vegetative bacteria and spores can persist for weeks to years.

Rhino Recyclers safely process and treat waste typically at 200˚ C for >30 minutes in an enclosed environment, while also removing nearly all moisture. Distributed networks of Recyclers can intercept waste, process and treat the waste, and divert the materials away from landfills and dumps. Since Recyclers can be built in months and deployed in days or weeks, these represent one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways of introducing waste treatment solutions and diverting disease-carrying wastes and organic wastes (which act as food for rodents, birds and other pathogen harbors and vectors) so they do not end up in landfills and dumps.

Ecogensus’ waste recycling solutions stop methane release at landfills, one of the top three anthropogenic sources of methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a 100-year global warming potential 28-34 times that of CO2, according to the UNECE.

Yet, landfills are often overlooked as one of the top three methane sources – sometimes simply because no viable alternative exists…until now. Rhino Recycler can process and recycle household waste (municipal solid waste), including all the organics, to prevent waste from going to the landfill. Rhino Recyclers have a combustion-free, low temperature (lower than most kitchen ovens), efficient waste processing solution.

The processed material resulting from Rhino Recyclers can be used for sustainable building materials and products. This has the added benefit of locking the CO2 that otherwise would have been released at the landfill along with the methane. Since the CO2 is being released from decomposing biomass (which has absorbed more recent CO2), Rhino Recyclers not only prevent methane release at the landfill but even act as a CO2 “sink” for locking up carbon!

When Rhino Recycler’s output is used as a bioenergy solution to replace fossil fuel, giant steps forward are taken in decarbonizing the economy – by keeping coal in the grown and replacing it with a bioenergy solution that is majority biogenic (renewable).

The world looks quite different than it used to. According to National Geographic, Western Europe used to be nearly 80% forested, today it is only 34%. China is down to being just 20% forested. Worse still, today’s greatest deforestation activity is occurring in tropical rainforests – where the world’s greatest land-based biodiversity exists.

Every year the world loses an estimated 25 million acres of forest. (Source: Texas State University/The Conversation) Deforestation is harming people, livelihoods, and biodiversity. It is also responsible for almost 15% of global CO2 emissions.

Ecogensus’ sustainable building materials and products can be produced from material (i.e. waste) that already is circulating in the economy but is ‘lost’ to disposal. With nearly 2 billion tons of municipal solid waste (household garbage) generated annually, imagine the amount of building materials that could be produced and how many trees could be saved.

According to one timber consultancy (Forest2Market), clearcut harvests generate on average 87 tons per acre of wood and 32 tons per acre if only practicing thinning harvests. Using the world’s waste to produce lumber substitutes could preserve a very significant amount of forest acreage across the world.

Landfills harm wildlife in numerous ways. Ecogensus is working to help wildlife by providing solutions that can end landfills. Landfill gases, especially methane, affect the atmosphere, which in turn harms animal life. Landfills and dumps directly harm nearby wildlife by leaching toxic substances into waterways. Landfills also act as major disruptors to natural ecosystems and animal migration patterns by attracting certain species that come to rely on the landfill as a never-ending source of discarded human foods.

According to reports from the U.N., NRDC, and Yale’s School of Environment, the world wastes about one-third of the food it produces – amounting to 1.3 to 1.6 billion tons per year – which then ends up in landfills (some may end up scattered elsewhere in the environment or on farms). This amounts to some $750 billion worth of food.

New research indicates that the food discarded in landfills and at sea is having a profound effect on wildlife populations and fisheries (Source: Yale School of the Environment). The landfills affect bird migration and serve as feeding (and breeding) grounds for natural reservoirs (e.g. rodents) of zoonotic pathogens. Landfills feed unnatural levels of seagull populations, attract bears and other mammals, and then affect their behaviors as they become dependent on these human sources of food.

Other wildlife populations suffer poisoning due to contaminants present in waterways that were polluted from landfill leachate. Toxicity of the water from landfills induces mortality, malformations and decreased pathogen resistance for certain animal embryos.
(Source: “How are garbage dumps impacting vertebrate demography, health, and conservation?”, Global Ecology and Conservation, Volume 12, October 2017)

It is time to end landfills and dumps. Ecogensus offers industry-leading solutions to end waste.