Current waste paradigm is picking valuables for money and discarding the rest at least cost on the expense of civilization. Different regimes may have created several variants of what kind of disposal may cost less to the waste manager from dumping through controlled land filling to incineration – with its special form of so called Zero Waste rededication – the more sophisticated the higher the socialized uncovered cost overruns to a local population, ways beyond reasonably fair affordability for emerging economies’ people.

In our money driven world there is only one solution to ultimately eradicate negligent disposal of wastes: a valorization to values that exceed the cost of its collection and treatment! 57% of total global resource consumption is Carbon today! A barrel crude oil contains about 100kg of it, one cubic meter Natural Gas ½ kg of it – depending on prices paid, this is around U$ 320 per tonne. Municipal Solid Waste [ #MSW ] may hold 27% – 30% Carbon, depending on its plastic content.

Plastics contain between 35-85% Carbon and may be recycled 4-5 times, depending in type and sorting precision, keeping the Carbon stored in matter over several product life cycles along the recycling cascade. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change observation cited that 8% of today’s crude oil production would go into plastic refining, which would be equivalent to 280mln tonnes of Carbon. Carbotopia™ can physically capture Carbon from Organic Wastes to provide it as a crude oil substitute of 2.1 liter per kg recovered Carbon. Therefore the Carbon content of a tonne MSW represents U$ 150 – 167 per tonne in value.

Today’s Zero Waste profiteers entice local politics to levy about the same amount from their sovereigns stealthily spread across various (municipal) fees, (feed-in) tariffs and (extended producer responsibility) cost adders to finance discarding this Carbon into atmosphere as if it was a one-way pack. And where ever there is industry with high process heat demand, the will generously hold out to assume waste remediation for such administrations, paying way below arms’ length energy fuel prices at the expense of citizens.

Recycling Carbon from not meaningfully compostable end of life cycle carbonaceous matter, including the non-recyclable plastics, could become a business, paying for itself all over the world, irrespective of local population’s wealth status. Once implemented the greed of our civilization will let no more plastics end up in our oceans, or re-usable Carbon turn to CO₂ in our atmosphere.