Sustainability Nuggets Podcast Transcript

How to be a part of the Trillion Dollar Global Waste Management Industry

Welcome to the Sustainability Nuggets podcast I am Rarosue Amaraibi and I am Tosin Folorunso. On this podcast we’ll learn about sustainability by discussing various related topics while focusing on three pillars the economy the society and the environment.

Hello guys welcome back to another episode of the sustainability nuggets podcast so before we start this episode I want to officially introduce my new co-host Tosin Folorunso so Tosin is not new to this brand she’s not new to green club she’s not new to the Sustainability Nuggets podcast she has featured in like several um videos in the past, a couple, yeah a couple like yeah like three four I think so and even when you’re not in sometimes she has helped me recording like she has been part of it honestly so but now she’s now officially here as a host so you’ll be seeing me and her in like episodes for the sustainability nugget podcast sometimes you still see only me but sometimes you see only her like we might interview people separately but just know we’re now working together yeah and uh behind the scenes I am your official project manager yes so she’s not just a co-host she’s a project manager so if you’ve noticed anything about how organized this podcast is now it’s Tosin. Tosin has been like a been a proper project manager so thank you thank you and I’m really glad that you’re on yeah so to today’s episode so today we are starting a new series on business opportunities in waste um the global waste management market is currently valued at 1.6 trillion dollars are you excited Tosin?

Is that what you do when you get excited? yeah I dance most of the time What do you do when you get excited? I do same thing but I turn on the camera and I record myself dancing. No mine is private in my room on my own okay. So in the first part of the series today we’ll go over how waste is currently being managed in different parts of the world and give an overview of opportunities to build wealth from specific waste materials like food paper and electronics. In later episodes we’ll dive deeper into the values that can be tapped from these individual materials. So we’re doing food paper electronics this looks like it’s going to be a long series yeah maybe we would have started the waste business by the time we complete the series oh if that’s the goal I’m all for it. I’m up for the challenge.

yeah so but a quick one into listeners before we continue we are not sharing a get rich quick scheme here just as you would with any other business it is important to do your market research before jumping in so Tosin why are we having this conversation in the first place about making money from waste? We’re having this conversation because waste is an intricate part of our lives we throw away stuff very often without really thinking about what value may still be in the item Rarosue I’m sure you’ve thrown away something today uh It’s still early in the morning oh I’ll probably throw away something when I eat. Okaay..

Is that like food waste like you actually don’t finish your food then you throw it away. That’s it’s bad is it bad habit but yeah I mostly do not finish my food okay yeah you can be better so either eat your food in small bits or something I also do sometimes if I can’t finish my food I would put it in the refrigerator and try to eat it later but the most that works for me is having my food in small bits so that if i want more then i’ll go for more okay so you have you thrown anything away today. Today and still actually it’s not morning anymore but uh i’ve not I haven’t because i’ve been trying to record this so i’m not breakfast maybe later i would have tossed a milk carton or junk meal because I get a lot of that and if I do get to cook I could have some food scraps like onion peels or something such a way yeah. What agitates me the most about waste is that there’s so much energy that goes into making materials or making products um i mean energy in terms of labor, electricity and transportation and all of that um could also contribute to emissions but after a short use of that item that’s the end but is it really the end? Yeah is it really? yeah um the World bank reports that we are currently generating 2 billion tons of waste and high income countries contributes about 34% though they only make up 16% of the world population um global waste management is expected to grow up to 3.4 billion tons by 2050 as income levels increase so things like rapid urbanization population growth and economic development will push the global regeneration to increase by 70% over the next 30 years so yeah because population is growing waste generation will obviously increase and that means waste is um discarding of waste increased so yeah yeah so especially as urbanization and economic development grows in the sub-saharan parts of Africa, Middle east and Asia we’ll have and as population increases as you mentioned there will have more waste been generated yeah so how is waste managed in different countries around the world now so for I’ll start with high-income countries so western countries like US, Britain and most of Europe they have organized with collection systems often managed by local authorities and the waste is either collected to be recycled, incinerated or for power which is waste to energy or landfilled most of the waste management economy is really dependent on garbage collection and disposal services so what about recycling so things don’t get recycled in most european countries unfortunately they actually ships to other countries like Asia to be recycled China yeah so if you say recycle if you say like collection of recyclables as a business yes that’s something that’s a part of garbage collection um paper recycling could probably get your passmark but there’s so much more we can do to create this a circular economy but like I think there’s so much more that these western countries can do to you know not only like collect those waste but actually make make them into new products. So an interesting fact it costs the New York Department of Sanitation almost half a million dollars annually to export it to refuse to waste to energy facilities and landfills in Pennsylvania and South carolina wow yeah that’s like that’s your budget wow and the same amount is spent by communities in the state of California to keep trash out of the waterways so try to imagine how much other states in the U.S spend on waste processing and disposal so like waste management budget is huge in most western countries on a larger scale yeah as I mentioned most most western countries actually export their waste to other countries in Asia so they don’t have many like remanufacturing processes that occur um there Interesting, so what happens in developing or and low-income countries? The system is mostly open landfill systems that’s what’s common in those places so over 90 percent of waste is openly dumped or burned um in those areas and often it is the poor and most vulnerable parts of the population that are disproportionately affected um the World bank reports I am again citing the World bank because that’s where I got most of these  reports from but in recent years the World bank reports that landslides of waste dumps have buried homes and people under powers of waste. It is the people who live near the waste dumps that power most of the crude recycling systems that occur in such countries so they don’t really have like sophisticated recycling systems or processing or waste processing systems like in other high income countries so it’s the poor people that would go through like waste speaking and scavenging and this makes them susceptible to serious health issues another problem with open landfill system is that most of the trash consists of organic materials which get broken down into methane although methane does not last as long in the atmosphere as co2 does it is far more effective at absorbing the sun’s heat and contributing to global warming sure so yeah methane stays just like 10 years 5-10 years co2 stays like 100 years but methane is like 28 times more effective than co2 in capturing um heat and so that’s like the main greenhouse gas causing harm. Yeah so even apart from like methane being produced and all their contaminants in this waste right when they get discarded there’s a lot of contaminants and in an open landfill there’s no control there’s no prepared um this contaminats can seep into the soil, seep into water bodies and even like with the ones that are vaporized gets into the air and cause all sort of diseases for the people around so it really reduces the standard of living of those people around those open landfills. So it looks like we are just not doing enough to address waste in our lives because the end of life is often not in front of our minds during the design process so the true way culture is rapidly spreading globally and we are losing a lot of valuable resources it feels like we are spending money on getting this garbage far out of our sights. but do not think about making new stuff from these discarded materials Yeah that’s right I think it’s even worse that there’s almost little or no attention being paid to waste management or disposal of waste in the development plans of so many countries so you see like countries that are growing their economy but do not actually add like waste how do we manage the waste how when the population increases how do we manage waste we don’t think of that we don’t have that foresight and it’s only after waste has become a big public health issue or pollution issue that we start running around for solutions. So we are consistently missing the opportunity to not only save our environment from pollution but also with with um wealth in the process you know it would be nice if we consider the fact that waste management can actually be a form of an economic opportunity for a country or a region but we don’t think of things that way yeah so and that brings us to our main point of this discussion what are these opportunities what are the opportunities available in the waste management space? yeah so as it was stated during our introduction we will be going through opportunities in that exist to make wealth from food and paper, electronics and plastics and I’’ll go in that order so first is food waste food loss um amounts to and waste amounts to 1.3 billion tons per year so this big number is not just like from the waste of food or like throwing away food it actually also represents the wastage of resources including the land that was plowed to plants the food the water that goes into processing the food or you know irrigating the soil and all of the labor involved it also involves the energy that was used to produce and transport the food and it also contributes to global warming and climate change because greenhouse gases are emitted during food production and distribution activities and methane is released during the decay of the wasted food. so I looked up ways to um reduce or recycle food waste or use food waste and I’ll be talking about two major ways. One is to make new products from the food that would have ended up as trash and the second um example I’ll be giving is composting and I’ll go in that order because I feel like it is important that we prevent the food from becoming waste in the first place instead of trying at the end to think of what we can do with the waste if you can’t prevent waste that’s like that’s perfect um so an example of a company that makes money from preventing waste is watermelon water they are a U.S based company and they help farmers turn loss into a profit by using discarded or blemished watermelon so most of the time when food is harvested if you if you go  your grocery store like you often find that the tomatoes the watermelons the pineapples the what oranges they look perfect they don’t have blemishes. So there’s actually a selection process that goes um goes on at the farm after harvesting like only the best looking fruits get picked so the if the apple has a weird shape it won’t be added just because of the shape it doesn’t mean it is not sweet it does not mean this is not good it’s just because it doesn’t look perfect which is bad right so that discrimination discrimination against food like they are perfect they are good to eat it’s just because of their look humans are obsessed with look anyways going on so this company watermelon water would take this um discarded or blemished watermelon and use it to produce juice and that’s how they make profit another example is Matriak food so Matriak food is also based in the U.S and they upcycle farm surplus and fresh cuts remnants into healthy, delicious low sodium vegetable products for schools must be tools food banks and other food services so they also like they are they are saving or they’re preventing waste but they’re also offering like good products fresh produce to um all of these places. Another company um I found is Sweet Benin. Sweet Benin in based in West africa and the what they do is to create cashew juice. so in Benin, every year only 10% of the 120 million kg of cashier fruit actually processed and in 2018 the company produced 180,000 bottles of cashew apple juice and is working to help cashew farmers supplement their off-season income so I think that’s a good opportunity like farmers are not only depending on what gets sold after cashew is harvested but they also um are able to make money when like cashew is not in season.  As a Nigerian I see opportunities to apply this in our country although I know there are some form of like things that we that people currently do in my country but I see opportunities for fruits like mangoes or cherry fruits or uh tiger nuts, African walnuts like we have a lot of seasonal fruits that you can’t just you cannot buy all of them and finish them in the season like so many go to waste because we don’t have the storage processes or the processing facilities to make them last longer so I imagine like the mangoes can be dried into um like fruit chews all those dried fruit snacks or you can even remake into like mango juice or jam so that way you are generating more income for farmers apart from just like selling them as actual fruits that sounds cool we always start mango jam business I’m actually i was prepared for it actually like this is this can be good business like dried mango foods mango jam and we can export it.

so what name do we give to it. Maybe our listeners can name it so everyone what do you think we should name our new product? Good idea okay please include it in the comments. The second opportunity is composting so that’s again this is when the material or this is when food has become waste. Composting is a natural process of recycling organic matter such as leaves and food scrap into valuable fertilizer that can enrich the soil and plants so you can make money by offering organic waste pick-up services at a cost and then another way is to create the compost for sale to farms and gardens that awesome but like I know you said you’re going to talk about two but please we need to mention biofuel/biogas production because I’m the bio-gas girl I’m more interested in that than composting. They are both important but I love biogas because you can convert these food waste into biogas and also have fertilizer from the process so I just love the whole idea of the anaerobic digestion for nutrient recovery and energy recovery yeah so like yeah I think um waste to biogas/ food waste biogas is definitely a great idea like it’s a great solution and the fact that  you’re actually producing energy so if you converted your food waste to cooking gas for example like you’re not only reducing waste by you’re actually able to produce energy or produce an alternative to the source of energy instead of burning fossil fuels which is great I do think that you know there’s not one solution to solving waste issues or sustainability in general there’s like a combination of solutions that will work so if it is composting that works for you go for it if it is preventing the food waste go for it if it is waste to biogas please go for it.

Okay so the next is paper what’s up with paper? Paper recycling may be like the top success story when it comes to recycling so nearly all kinds of people can be recycled except a few like brown and craft envelopes or carbon papers, tissues and coffee cups so though paper recycling can be capital intensive at the entrepreneurial level there are opportunities available in the provision of services such as collection transportation and sorting. One of China’s richest women Zhang Yin formed a company in the 1990s to collect paper from U.S and Europe and ship it to China where is recycled into corrugated carbon this is then made into boxes that package products made from china and the company has since grown into a billion dollar enterprise. In 2006 Forbes named Zhang Yin the wealthiest woman in China.

RESPECT!

I’m getting there yeah so so maybe you can be the next richest person in your area or country by dealing in waste and you know products all around the world are often shipped in boxes and the demand for packaging will only increase as purchasing power increases like people keep buying more stuff, people will have to keep shipping more stuff globally and they most of your products come in boxes right like when you buy something on Amazon or even when you send something out of the country they come in boxes so there will still be a demand for packaging for paper packaging um so there’s like a lot of opportunity here instead of cutting down new forests to make people why not make the most out of what is already in circulation. That’s true although paper can not be infinitely recycled because they are made of long fibers which shorten after each recycling process so you can still recycle them up to five seven times before the fibers becomes too short and at this point they can be processed into something like egg cartons so even when they reach their end of life like when they can’t be recycled anymore like there’s still something you can make them into to make money you can make egg cartons as Rarosue mentioned you can also um make them use them as like sealing for packaging like if you’re packaging things like think fragile materials that can break you can hard shredded paper as the like pillow so it doesn’t get um what’s the word so it doesn’t get destroyed during shipping that’s true so another waste material to consider is e-waste so by e-waste I mean electronic waste so e-waste constitutes a health and environmental hazard because they contain toxic additives or hazardous substances such as mercury which damages the human brain or coordination system um they require a special collection and disposal process which is one way to build a business from it but another thing becoming trending in this space is electronic repair but it’s just becoming trendy in the western world because since when I was born in Nigeria and I’m sure in like African countries like repair has been a big deal It’s cheaper to repair than to buy a new phone you want in Nigeria but in like the U.Si know it’s cheaper to just buy than to repair so right I guess you guys can learn something from us. Yes I mean if you’re in a place in your location like Nigeria for example it’s you can start your own business from just recycling repairing or refurbishing electronic items but here and it’s a problem in most western countries because of the right to repair so these big tech companies actually lobby millions of dollars to block people from repairing So Apple would tell you that when you bring in their when you bring in your products for repair they tell you that they will replace it and repair the other one or refurbish it. There’s no repair happening, you are getting a new one basically yeah and then old one that you took probably gets like um it would get shredded so there’s there’s so much that can be done with it like but maybe I don’t know maybe they also like repair the recycle i don’t know it’s just i um they have like so they have a third party company that you work with they collect all of their products for recycling but I’ve um worked with an electronic waste recycling company before and we mentioned that most of the elections actually get shredded then they take out the component parts so it’s and it sounds interesting to me because it’s like we lithuim on one of the um metals used to make electronics and that can be found in most solar or electric cars rather is being mined but there’s like you can why can’t we recycle the lithium in these electronics and use them to make new ones why do we have to keep mining you know to make yeah it’s interesting do you want to learn something else that is interesting so of course of course yeah so all the medals offered at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games were made from metals that were collected from recycled electronics oh wow yeah cool right so over 6.2 million used mobile phones along with digital cameras hand held games and laptops were collected nationwide and then they were able to extract 30 kilograms of gold that were used to make gold medals then they extracted over 4000 kilograms of silver and 2700 kilograms of bronze So there’s a lot of precious metals in your electronics and if it doesn’t get repaired you can actually extract the metals make something out of them. So it’s absurd that we are throwing away stuff like it’s yeah sure so on to the last material for the day plastic

So plastic has become the most notorious form of waste. yeah it really is what again whose fault? It’s not plastic’s fault it is we humans producing the plastic and not making good use or actually managing how we throw it away. So only 10 of all the plastic that was ever produced has been recycled so what has happened to the 90 percent a variety of things so some are incinerated either to be converted to energy or um or developing countries where they practice open burning like they actually burned which is bad for their health. A large percentage do end up in the landfill so even like for example in the U.S even when you dutifully put your plastic in the recycling board it does not guarantee that it will get recycled um and over a long period of time the plastic will break down into microplastics. So plastics do not degrade for thousands tens of thousands millions of years but they get broken down into tiny particles and those particles contaminate our food, they contaminate the air they contaminate water and they also cause harm to sea creatures or creatures that live in water. So I always camping for going plastic free especially single-use plastic so things like water bottles or plastic cups like you can do away those things but often I also think about how or what can be done with all of the plastic that’s been thrown away. Why do we not make them into something else how can we repurpose them and prevent them from ending up especially in the ocean where because harm to sea animals. The most inspiring solution I’ve found is Precious Plastic but that’s it for today. oh wow Tosin that was abrupt but yeah truly yeah truly we will need to end the episode here and in the next part of this series we’ll be discussing precious plastic like Tosin just mentioned and this Precious plastic is a big global community working to fix the plastic waste problem and it is open to anyone yeah so until then reflect on how you can consciously reduce single-use plastic in your daily life and think about a business solution for waste around you if you also find an interesting example you can share with us so if you find an interesting idea don’t worry we won’t steal your idea there’s enough space in the sky to fly. So but don’t forget to share with us in the comments and if you have not yet subscribed to our channel please subscribe. subscribe follow, rate us, all good things here so before we just go away from this episode I have a good news to share so earlier this year Sustainability Nuggets got featured as one of the best 80 Sustainability podcast on the web.

And thank you guys because without our audience listening to us and sharing our contents there’s no way we’ll be on this list and last time I checked we were ranked 19 so just imagine 19 on the web so yeah like it’s really encouraging that our efforts are being recognized and I know we can even do better can become number one in the world yeah so this list was featured on um feedspot blog I’m going to be leaving the link um down in the description box um it’s a live link so um the position keeps changing because I think the very first time we were like 40 or something but now so that’s cool yeah it’s really cool so you can check them out and yeah that’s it um see you guys in the next episode bye.