Key Messages
- Only 26% of waste is turning into value
- Global recycling & reuse rate is decreasing from year to year
- Worldwide raw material consumption is around 101bn tonnes per year and increasing
- Of consumed raw materials 22% are lost to environment
- Only 8,5% of waste is coming from households
- Up to half of our raw material consumption can be covered by recycling and reusing waste
- Politics, transparency and standardisation are key measures to increase waste turning into value
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Introduction
“Waste to value” (WTV) refers to the process of converting waste materials or byproducts into useful or valuable resources, products, or energy. It involves transforming materials that would typically be discarded as waste into something that has economic, environmental, or social benefits.
Currently only 26% of waste is turning into value world wide, according to the “circular gap report”.
The concept of WTV is rooted in the idea of moving away from a linear “take-make-dispose” model of production and consumption and shifting towards a more circular economy. Instead of treating waste as a problem to be managed or disposed of, waste to value aims to extract maximum value from these materials through various methods such as recycling, reusing, repurposing, or recovering energy.
Consumption
The reason for a decreasing recycling & reuse rate (waste turning to value) is the increasing raw materials consumption. Currently humanity consumes over 100bn tonnes of raw materials per year.
From they year 2000 till 2021 the raw material consumption almost doubled. If the trend continues, material consumption is estimated around 180bn tonnes in 2050 which is roughly the mass of Mount Everest.
