WHAT IS THE
FUTURE OF
URBAN WASTE
MANAGEMENT?
What will waste management look like in 2025?
Here are our top ten predictions for the future of urban recycling.
1
Route optimisation
What night does your bin go on the street? In the future,
it might not matter, as dynamic route optimisation will
mean that your driver will now be automatically routed to exactly
where the waste is. How will you know whether your garbo is
coming? Check if your bin is full! And pay when it is.
2
Pay As You Throw
Not only will collection companies know whether your
bin or skip is full - they will also know how much it
weighs and increasingly - what you put in it. This Pay As You
Throw (PAYT) model, including weight based charging, will
create a greater incentive for generators to seek diversion to
recovery.
3
The end of consumer landfill streams?
First came dry recycling, which reduced the kerbside
landfill bin from 240L to 120L. Then came organics
recovery, which reduced its collection to fortnightly. Next, with
wet and dry loads diverted directly to a recovery facility, will
consumer facing landfill streams become a thing of the past?
Welcome to universal recycling, where all bins are recycling
bins, and landfill contracts only exist between landfill operators
and Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) or composters.
4
City to Soil
While professionally managed landfills will be
essential infrastructure of the future, putrescible
landfills may become a technology of the past. Carbon taxes,
increasing community sensitivity and the growing value of
organics will drive them into composting. Or for contaminated
streams - fuel manufacture.
5
Waste to Fuel
Globally, generation of electricity and heat from a
waste source has been adopted for decades. However,
the desire to substitute fossil fuels in boilers means that
MRFs are increasingly adopting fuel manufacture loops. This
technology is particularly suited to high calorific, carbon-neutral
fuels like tyres and contaminated organics. These fuels will
supply diverse energy markets.
8
6
Infrastructure convergence
Fuel manufacturers using facilities like cement
kilns are part of a broader trend – the convergence
between water, energy and recycling infrastructure. This trend
will continue, with organics being treated in sewage treatment
plants via co-digestion. Meanwhile, manufacturing sites and
MRFs will continue to converge into industrial ecology parks,
which will manufacture fuels for collection trucks.
7
Alternative fuels
Kerbside and skip collection vehicles, like buses, are
‘back to base’ vehicle fleets. This makes them perfect
candidates for alternative fuels. Three alternatives battle in this
space – biodiesel (typically B20), gas fuelled trucks and electric
trucks. All three will win in different markets and applications.
Meanwhile, these trucks will become increasingly automated.
8
Robot recovery
Perhaps that six pack you left on the bin will become
a battery pack? Robots are rapidly busting into the
resource recovery industry - on the kerb and in the MRF. While
there will be some job losses from this, experts largely think
this will reduce the cost of recovery and increase safety for
workers - particularly on picking lines. However, some streams
may go directly back to their manufacturers.
9
Recyclers go postal
No, it’s not a scene from ‘American Psycho’. Instead,
commercial operators like REDcycle and TerraCycle
have proven that consumers are willing to mail back materials
for recycling - even for tiny items like cigarette butts. In
particular, expect e-waste recycling to go postal. This will be
important as kerbside bins get less common.
10
High rise recycling
With housing prices and demand for inner city living
spiking, collection from high density dwellings will
increase and kerbside MGB pickups will decrease. This will
mean accessing larger bins in smaller spaces (like underground
car parks), and increased use of technologies like garbage
chutes, onsite compactors and even vacuum collection systems!
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