Top 10: Waste-To-Resource Technologies
Litter in parks, overflowing landfills and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — the modern world is full of waste.
A circular economy would eliminate this, turning everyday rubbish into useful resources like fertilisers, energy or even fizzy drinks.
It won’t be possible to transition to a circular economy without new technologies to repurpose waste.
We’ve ranked 10 of the top waste-to-resource technologies that are accelerating progress towards circularity.
10. Pyrolysis
Key company: Babcock International Group
Top benefit: Reduce biomass waste
Pyrolysis is a thermal decomposition process that breaks down organic materials in an oxygen-free environment to create smaller molecules. It can be used to create liquid products like petrochemical replacements or biofuels from biomass waste.
Babcock International Group works with PyroCore to create syngas through pyrolysis using waste. The solid residue produced in the process sequesters some carbon in the form of a biochar that can be incorporated into composite materials. This process can even help to reduce plastic waste.
9. Waste-to-energy incineration
Key company: Subaru
Top benefit: Reduce landfill waste
Landfill waste that is not reusable or recyclable can be burned to produce electricity. Some people have concerns about unintentional releases of toxic materials from these processes, but methods to reduce this are used where possible such as rapidly cooling ash and emissions monitoring.
Waste that is not reusable from Subaru’s zero-landfill factory in Indiana, USA is incinerated by Reworld to produce energy. Subaru says this accounts for less than 5% of its total waste. The ash resulting from this process is used in road resurfacing materials.
8. Gasification
Key company: Air Products
Top benefit: Increase waste value
Gasification converts carbon-based feedstocks, like biomass, into a synthetic gas mixture that can be used for electricity generation, hydrogen production or production of chemicals. It provides efficient conversion of waste to energy and can use a versatile range of feedstock.
Air Products uses gasification to produce syngas, increasing the value of waste products and producing significantly fewer air pollutants than traditional combustion methods. It can help to contribute to energy security.
7. Hydrothermal carbonisation
Key company: Ingelia
Top benefit: Converts wet biomass waste
Hydrothermal carbonisation converts wet biomass into carbon-rich hydrochar under high pressure and temperatures in the presence of water. This process can use wet biomass without pre-drying it, making it suitable for a variety of organic materials like aquatic biomass and industrial wastes.
Ingelia uses hydrothermal combustion to produce biocoal that is high density, reducing transportation and management costs. The biocoal is versatile and can be used for electrical generation, direct combustion or co-combustion.
6. Anaerobic digestion
Key company: Veolia
Top benefit: Create value from waste
Anaerobic digestion is a process where microorganisms break down organic matter in the absence of oxygen. It produces biogas that can be used as a renewable energy source and even nutrient-rich digestate that can be used as fertiliser.
Veolia uses anaerobic digestion in efforts to move towards a circular economy. Its Artois Methanisation site has a treatment capacity of 32,000 tonnes per year and produces 7,000 tonnes of digestate per year. This avoids around 2,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually.
5. Plastic-to-fuel tech
Key company: Neste
Top benefit: Reduce plastic pollution
Globally around 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year and this is projected to increase to one billion tonnes annually by 2060 without significant changes. Technologies converting waste plastics into fuels provide a potential solution to existing plastic waste.
Neste has explored ways to introduce liquefied waste plastic as a future raw material for fossil refining, aiming to process more than one million tonnes of waste plastic annually by 2030.
"Our target is to also be a leader in low-carbon refining and support circular economy by developing innovative solutions based on waste plastic," says Matti Lehmus, President and CEO at Neste.
4. Black soldier fly larvae bioconversion
Key company: Tyson Foods
Top benefit: Creates protein
Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) bioconversion can convert a wide variety of organic waste into valuable biomass. Black soldier fly eggs are hatched and added to prepared waste which they consume.
Tyson Foods invested in Protix, an insect ingredients company, to build the first at-scale insect ingredient facility in the USA. The facility will upcycle food manufacturing byproducts into high quality insect proteins and lipids for use in the pet food, aquaculture and livestock industries.
John R. Tyson, Chief Financial Officer at Tyson Foods, says: “The insect lifecycle provides the opportunity for full circularity within our value chain, strengthening our commitment to building a more sustainable food system for the future.”
3. E-waste recycling
Key company: Umicore
Top benefit: Conserves resources
While electronic devices are now essential to daily life, waste from old parts can be hazardous if not properly disposed of. Recycling e-waste helps to avoid landfill waste, conserve precious resources like gold and prevent toxic materials contaminating soil and water.
Umicore recycles e-waste and refines the precious metals found inside to reuse, decreasing the need for virgin materials. The company works with an assay-based settlement and typically valorises silver, gold, palladium and copper. It also safely recycles batteries with proprietary technology that recovers lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper in their purest battery-grade form.
Battery Pass is a project that provides batteries with digital passports to support tracking a battery’s carbon footprint and increasing transparency in its supply chain. The project is run by a consortium of 12 partners including Umicore.
2. Organic waste-to-bioplastics
Key company: BASF
Top benefit: Organic waste management
Organic waste, such as agricultural residues or food waste, can be used to create bioplastics through the extraction of biopolymers like starch and cellulose. These biopolymers are then treated to purify them and processed into final bioplastic products.
BASF’s organic waste-to-bioplastics technology converts organic waste into biodegradable bioplastics. Its process uses bacterial fermentation to produce PHAs from various organic waste streams and has the potential to reduce plastic pollution while valorising organic waste. BASF reported a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to traditional plastic breakdown.
The bioplastics produced are fully biodegradable and break down in industrial composting facilities within 12 weeks.
BASF ecovio is a finished bioplastic compound that is certified as compostable worldwide. It can be used for solutions like shopping bags, food packaging, coatings of paper or cardboard packaging and even mulch films in agriculture.
1. Carbon capture and utilisation
Key company: Climeworks
Top benefit: Removes carbon from the atmosphere
Carbon capture comes in many forms, from direct air capture (DAC) to membrane gas separation. Captured carbon can then be stored away or used, for example in building materials or to carbonate fizzy drinks.
Climeworks uses DAC to put the fizz in Coca-Cola HBC’s Vasler sparkling water. Large fans are used to draw ambient air into collector units where specially designed filters capture CO₂ molecules which are later released and collected for use.
“We are very happy to be entering the beverage market in Switzerland together with Coca‑Cola HBC Switzerland, attaching importance to social and environmental aspects of business,” Climeworks Co-Founder and Co-CEO Dr Christoph Gebald said when Climeworks and Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland first formed the partnership.
“Coca‑Cola HBC Switzerland has been an exceptionally supportive partner and invaluable in moving the application of DAC in the beverage industry forward — something we are very thankful for.”
Fellow Co-Founder and Co-CEO Jan Wurzbacher added: “We are excited by the chance to collaborate with a beverage industry leader as part of our overarching goal of capturing 1% of global CO₂ emissions by 2025.”
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