Recycling municipal, agricultural and industrial waste into energy, fertilizers, food and construction materials, and economic feasibility: a review

Abstract

The global amount of solid waste has dramatically increased as a result of rapid population growth, accelerated urbanization, agricultural demand, and industrial development. The world's population is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, while solid waste production will reach 2.59 billion tons. This will deteriorate the already strained environment and climate situation. Consequently, there is an urgent need for methods to recycle solid waste. Here, we review recent technologies to treat solid waste, and we assess the economic feasibility of transforming waste into energy. We focus on municipal, agricultural, and industrial waste. We found that methane captured from landfilled-municipal solid waste in Delhi could supply 8–18 million houses with electricity and generate 7140 gigawatt-hour, with a prospected potential of 31,346 and 77,748 gigawatt-hour by 2030 and 2060, respectively. Valorization of agricultural solid waste and food waste by anaerobic digestion systems could replace 61.46% of natural gas and 38.54% of coal use in the United Kingdom, and could reduce land use of 1.8 million hectares if provided as animal feeds. We also estimated a levelized cost of landfill solid and anaerobic digestion waste-to-energy technologies of $0.04/kilowatt-hour and $0.07/kilowatt-hour, with a payback time of 0.73–1.86 years and 1.17–2.37 years, respectively. Nonetheless, current landfill waste treatment methods are still inefficient, in particular for treating food waste containing over 60% water.

How Can Construction and Demolition Waste Recycling Public–Private Partnership Projects Performance Compensate during the Operation Period? A Two-Stage Perspective of Recycling and Remanufacturing

“…The innovations of this paper are as follows. (1) For the first time, this paper reveals the compensation mechanism during the operation period of CDW recycling PPP projects through the principal-agent theory, which enriches the literature on principal-agent theory. (2) This paper is the first to analyze the two-stage performance of the recycling and remanufacturing of CDW recycling PPP projects through the Stackelberg game, which provides a new idea for project performance research.…”

“…In this project, θ was used to measure the additional social cost brought by government compensation. This means that each unit of compensation that the government transfers to firms incur a cost of (1 + θ) units to society, θ ∈ [0, 1].…”

“…Construction activity is on the rise as population growth and urbanization accelerate [1]. However, construction and demolition waste (CDW), generated by construction activities worldwide, accounts for approximately 35% of the world's solid waste [2], and CDW in China accounts for 40% of the total municipal waste [3].…”

Microplastic sources, formation, toxicity and remediation: a review

“…One of the most effective strategies for controlling the release of conventional plastic and microplastic products into the environment is to reduce their utilisation and production (Peng et al 2023;Yang et al 2023). This is because prevention is generally better than treatment.…”

Materials, fuels, upgrading, economy, and life cycle assessment of the pyrolysis of algal and lignocellulosic biomass: a review

“…One available option could be accomplished through netzero waste and sustainable energy transition, where wastes can generate renewable bioenergy to meet energy demands (Farghali et al 2022b). Several valorization processes have been used to treat biomass/wastes, such as pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonization, anaerobic digestion, landfilling, and composting (Peng et al 2023). Nevertheless, most conventional waste valorization systems have several disadvantages and limitations, such as water and soil contamination, climate change, and pollution (Duan et al 2021;Gaska et al 2021).…”