Paris, France - All economic activities associated with waste, from collection to recycling, would appear to represent a world market of some 300 billion euros, shared about evenly between municipal waste and industrial waste, according to a new report commissioned by environmental services firm Veolia. This figure essentially covers OECD countries and a number of large emerging countries such as China and Brazil. The true figure is thus probably substantially greater, insofar as mere assessment of the informal sector, present in most emerging and developing countries, is impossible.

The four major municipal waste markets are the USA, Europe, Japan and China, together accounting for a turnover worth more than 130 billion euros. The leading industrial waste market would appear to be Japan, ahead of Europe and the USA.

These figures are representative of the “modern” waste economy sector, illustrating above all the extraordinary heterogeneity of this activity at world level. On the one side, in many countries, the informal economy deals with waste collection with, in parallel, more or less effective participation by the municipalities, resulting in massive landfill sites picked and operated by the descendants of the erstwhile rag-pickers.

In contrast, in developed countries and in towns and cities of emerging countries, waste management has become an integral part of urban engineering. Alongside the municipal services, one finds small and large enterprises in increasing numbers, the large enterprises having an international dimension in the same way as the principal players Veolia Environmental Services and Suez Environnement or, in the American market only, Waste Management.

The title of the new report, “From waste to resource” does sum up the ambition of Veolia Environmental Services. Their objective is to reconcile the scarcity of natural resources with the almost “infinite” quantities of waste produced by towns, cities and industries, waste which must unfailingly and assiduously be recovered, says Denis Gasquet, CEO of Veolia Environmental Services and Executive Vice President of Veolia Environnement.

The full report can be downloaded under veolia-environmentalservices.com.

Quelle: Veolia Environmental Services

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