Refuse sites that extract organic matter from the urban waste stream and convert it into soluble bio-organic materials for industry and agriculture rather than burning or composting organic waste could boost their revenues by up to six times, according to a study published in the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues.
Enzo Montoneri of the University of Turin, Italy, and colleagues at the University of Bologna and ACEA Pinerolese Industriale in Pinerolo, explain how urban bio-wastes (UBW) contain soluble bio-organics (SBO) that have excellent chemical properties with proven value in chemical and environmental technology, in agriculture and in animal husbandry as well as being useful starting materials for commercial synthetic products. They suggest that given the huge volumes of such organic waste entering landfill and refuse sites that there is an urgent need to re-use such materials rather burying them. They point out that the value in burning or composting organic waste is about a sixth of that available through recycling, which adequately offsets additional processing costs and avoids simply adding to the atmospheric carbon burden by avoiding release of carbon dioxide through combustion.
Given rapidly increasing urban populations, the management of waste has become an enormous economic burden on modern society. The safe disposal of intractable waste and the recycling of metals, plastics, paper and organic matter, such as animal and vegetable food waste are not entirely cost effective, a fact reflected in refuse taxes that exists in many parts of the world. A case study of the biochemenergy project at the Acea waste treatment plan in Pinerolo, reveals that the chemical potential of vegetable and animal waste is far more valuable than the mere heat and electrical energy that might be generated through its incineration.
Preliminary data suggest that scale-up of extraction of soluble bio-organics materials from urban bio-waste would be commercially and chemical viable, a model for re-use of the organic waste at other refuse sites and recycling centres around the globe. The next step will be to create partnerships between a waste treatment plant that can produce the starting materials and chemical companies ready to develop and market the products available to them.
“The final message coming from the biochemenergy project, then, is: before burning everything up, let’s see what we can salvage and re-use,” the researchers conclude.
“Biochemenergy: a project to turn an urban wastes treatment plant into biorefinery for the production of energy, chemicals and consumer’s products with friendly environmental impact” in Int. J. Global Environmental Issues, 2011, 11, 170-196