01. Benefits

Waste management benefits

Sustainable waste management is a key concept of the circular economy and offers many opportunities:

Economic: waste management involves collecting, sorting, treating, recycling, and when properly facilitated providing a source of energy and resources. Therefore, it has a huge economic potential that needs to be leveraged by public and private entities.
Social: besides creating jobs, improved waste management leads to a better quality of life for local populations, by improving hygiene conditions and reducing health risks related to illegal dumping and inadequate garbage collection.
Environmental: the main advantage of sustainable waste management is to lessen the impact on the environment, by improving air and water quality and contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Besides, reducing food waste also helps reduce the heavy environmental cost of producing more.

02. Definition

What is waste management?

First of all, there are many types of waste: municipal (household, commercial and demolition waste), hazardous (industrial), biomedical, electronic (e-waste), radioactive, etc. Waste management includes the collection, transport, valorization and disposal of these waste. More broadly, it includes any activity involved in the organization of waste management from production to final treatment.

The main principles of waste management are:

Waste hierarchy, referring to the “3Rs rule” Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, waste prevention and minimisation being the most desirable goal.
Extended producer responsibility, adding all the environmental costs to the market price of a product, including end-of-life disposal.
The polluter pays principle, requiring that a waste generator pays for the appropriate disposal of the waste.

03. Impacts

Waste management methods

Waste management techniques include:

Landfills: a landfill, sometimes referred to as a garbage dump, is a place where waste is generally stored on the ground. Landfills are the most common and cheapest method for waste disposal in the world.
Incinerator: Incineration of waste is a technique of transformation by the action of fire. Waste combustion can be used to produce electricity and heat, but also is an important source of air pollution.
Recycling: recycling is the physical reprocessing of old materials such as metals, plastics and e-waste - industrial or household - into new products. The type of material collected for recycling can vary depending on the city and country.
Biological reprocessing: composting is a process of conversion and recovery of organic matter into a stabilized, hygienic, soil-like product rich in humic compounds: the compost. Anaerobic digestion is a process similar to composting, that allows the treatment of organic waste and sludge by fermentation in the absence of oxygen.
Waste collection: the collection of household waste is usually done by means of garbage trucks, which go to each point of garbage production to collect garbage. There are also collection systems where a network centralizes waste, such as automated vacuum collection.
Energy recovery: energy recovery from waste, often called waste-to-energy, is the process converting non-recyclable waste materials into usable heat, fuel or electricity through combustion, anaerobic digestion, gasification, pyrolyzation, etc.

04. Solutions

Waste management solutions

The Solar Impulse Label is granted to innovative waste management solutions that meet high standards of sustainability and profitability. Each solution goes through a strict assessment process performed by independent experts.

Aug 2020

Use case available

Too Good To Go

Business to consumer platform aiming to fight food waste

Agrifood & Natural Environment
Utilities (Water, Energy, Waste)

May 2018

Use case available

SEAB Energy - Flexibuster

A small-scale modular container for transforming organic waste into energy

Utilities (Water, Energy, Waste)
Agrifood & Natural Environment

Mar 2021

Use case available

Clean & sustainable cities

A monitoring tool to help cities decrease littering, water use and co2 emissions

Utilities (Water, Energy, Waste)

Jul 2021

Use case available

Rice Husk insulation

A bio-architecture for energy efficient, natural buildings

Buildings & Constructions
Agrifood & Natural Environment

05. Implementations

Waste management solutions implementations

Too Good To Go by Too Good To Go implemented by City of Copenhagen in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2016

Too Good To Go by Too Good To Go implemented by Okay in Halle (Belgium) in 2024

SEAB Energy - Flexibuster by SEaB Energy implemented by Sepur in Thieverval-Grignon (France) in 2019

Clean & sustainable cities by Cortexia implemented by City of Geneva in Geneva (Switzerland) in 2019

Rice Husk insulation by ricehouse s.r.l. implemented by Industrial Company in Salento (Italy) in 2023

Industrial-Scale Drying Unit for Waste Upcycling by Proseed implemented by Zenhäusern in Sion (Switzerland) in 2024

SHOC Technology & Recycling by VIRIDIS environnement implemented by The Intermunicipal waste management for the Beauce Region (RICBS) in Chartres (Canada) in 2021

KioBox by Sabai Sabai implemented by Thai Café in Brussels (Belgium) in 2020

SAVE SAND by MS implemented by Vaills in Baho (France) in 2022

FluidSolids Biocomposites by FluidSolids AG implemented by Pumpstation GmbH in Zurich (Switzerland) in 2022

Geopannel Ecological Insulation Solution by GEOPANNEL implemented by IES Hermanos d’Elhuyar in Logrono (Spain) in 2022

Excess Materials Exchange (EME) by Excess Materials Exchange implemented by Enfield Council in Einfield (United Kingdom) in 2022

Speed-O-Clar by Densiline implemented by Agglomération du Bocage Bressuirais in Bressuire (France) in 2022

Smart Prepregs by CompPair Technologies Ltd. implemented by Innosuisse in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 2023

The Patented Plagazi Process by Plagazi AB (publ) implemented by Municipality of Köping in Köping (Sweden) in 2024

The Patented Plagazi Process by Plagazi AB (publ) implemented by Gotlandsbolaget in Båstad (Sweden) in 2022

06. Challenges

Challenges & disadvantages

Hazard: the first one while promoting recycling is to make sure both consumers and recyclers are protected from toxic and dangerous substances that can be found in waste.
High costs: moreover, this cannot be seen as a short-term lucrative investment as it obviously requires a lot of money to implement sustainable waste management strategies.
Quality of recycled products: downcycling, the recycling process that turns waste into products of inferior quality, can cause a problem regarding the quality of secondary products.

Connect with us

Any questions

Feel free to get in touch with us
pauline.michiels@solarimpulse.com

Explorer for sustainability

Bertrand dedicates his life to demonstrate the opportunities lying in sustainable development and to raise interest in profitable solutions to protect the environment.

Pioneering vision

As a pioneer, he understood that fighting climate change with clean and efficient technologies is opening-up new industrial markets and offering a unique and profitable opportunity for economic growth.

Collaborators

The Solar Impulse Foundation has entered in close and impactful collaboration with several international institutions, corporations, states and cities around the world to facilitate the identification, assessment, funding and implementation of efficient solutions.

Supporters

The Solar Impulse Foundation is working with like-minded incubators, accelerators and organizations, creating a qualitative worldwide network to boost the adoption of efficient solutions.

The search-engine for climate action

The Explorer is a one-of-a-kind search engine that showcases profitable climate solutions from all over the world which are part of an ever-growing, curated, and publicly-accessible database.

Explore

Industrial Processes & Consumer Goods

Buildings & Construction

Utilities (Water, Energy, Waste)

Agrifood & Natural Environment

Mobility

A label focused on both environment and profitability

Assessed by independent experts, the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution label, serves as a credible marker of quality to decision-makers in business and governments.

Submit your Efficient Solution

For the first time a label assesses the economic profitability of solutions that protect the environment.
Sign up to become a Member of the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions and submit it now!

What is the Experts’ role in evaluating the Solutions?

The Experts are key in the labelling process, using their technical and professional expertise to assess and critique Solutions seeking the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label.