The waste management sector is faced with two structural trends that are profoundly shaking up the way it operates: increasing waste volumes(the World Bank predicts a 70% rise by 2050) and rising waste management costs(according to the Cour des Comptes, in France, they have been rising by 4.3% per year for the past 20 years). At the same time, the raw materials supply crisis has become a long-term one. We are reaching the limits of our resource deposits, and are measuring not only the financial cost, but also the environmental cost.
According to the Global Resources Outlook 2019 report, half of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the extraction and processing of raw materials. Now, faced with the increasingly visible consequences of climate disruption and the accumulation of millions of tons of waste that pollute our environment, we can't fail to see theurgent need to act to develop resource circularity and create a sustainable supply chain. This is essential if we are to safeguard our environment, our economy and our industry.
But we're still too far away. If we take the example of the PET plastic resin used to make water bottles, the recycled version is more expensive than virgin PET.
For resource circularity to become effective, recycled and recovered raw materials must become more competitive than virgin raw materials. And to achieve this, the waste management sector needs to rapidly become more efficient.
Faced with such a challenge, smart data - a process enabling the most relevant data for a business to be processed in real time - is the perfect candidate for creating solutions with immediate impact.
Provide data for resource traceability
The main obstacle to effective waste management and recovery is the absence of relevant indicators, or indeed the absence of indicators at all. In the case of France, the Cour des Comptes highlighted two factors affecting the usefulness of existing indicators: their multiplicity, resulting in the production of diffuse information, and their delivery times, which are often too long.
The solution would then be to produce indicators, in consultation with industry professionals, and deliver them in real time. In other words, the use of intelligent data to measure the performance of players in the waste management industry in real time would enable them to achieve the targets set by public authorities.
Lixo was created for exactly this purpose.
A proven impact for waste collectors and sorting centers
We have developed visual recognition technology to identify all types of waste. This data is then made available directly and continuously to waste management and recovery companies. This informs them of the exact composition of the waste streams they process, and gives them an exhaustive and precise view of several previously unknown or estimated parameters:
- The type of waste collected
- The purity rate of sorted streams
- The quality of flows to be recycled
- The recyclability potential of material batches
Acquiring this data at the right time enables us to improve sorting at source, optimize waste management costs and better direct waste to treatment facilities .
Greater efficiency, but above all greater responsibility
Collecting and processing more recoverable waste not only produces more recycled materials, but also avoids incineration. This is a key issue in our race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
.
According toGaia's latest report, How Reducing Waste is a Climate Gamechanger, every ton
of plastic burned releases 1.43 tons of CO2, taking into account the resulting energy recovery.
Even more impressive, according to the same report, the implementation of better waste management policies on a global scale could reduce the sector's total emissions by 84%. This would prevent the emission of over 1.4 billion tonnes of CO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of 300 million cars.
But every activity has an environmental cost, and the digital sector is not exempt: it accounts for 3 to 4% of GHG emissions worldwide. A relatively modest contribution, but one that is growing rapidly. According to the preliminary report of the Senate's information mission on the environmental footprint of digital technology,
, if nothing is done in France, digital-related emissions will increase by 60% by 2040, to represent 6.7% of national GHG emissions. An exponential increase that we need to control . Especially when it comes to circularity.
The development of the circular economy is closely linked to the widespread use of data to ensure the traceability of goods and objects. The digital carbon footprint of the circular economy must therefore be measured, monitored and controlled, to ensure that the virtuous logic of circularity is applied in all its dimensions.
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