Garbage: Liability or Asset?

If you drive along the highways leading to Oslo, Norway, you might be struck by the huge number of garbage trucks driving past you. Those trucks are taking trash to 400 incineration facilities around the city. And they’re not burning garbage because their landfills are overflowing. They’re burning it for energy.

Garbage in Norway is no longer a liability—it’s an asset. And the idea is spreading: Denmark, Sweden, and other European nations have been busy building waste-to-energy plants too. These incinerators burn garbage, producing steam and flue gasses. The steam turns turbines that generate electricity, while flue gases can be used to produce biofuels. The only thing that ends up in the landfill is ash, a by-product of garbage incineration.

This isn’t an experiment in waste management. It’s part of a growing alternative fuels revolution. Almost half of Oslo’s residential energy comes from burning garbage. So does most of the heat for its schools. Amazingly, even though Norway’s incineration facilities burn about 150 million tons of garbage every year, they’re operating at only a fraction of capacity. With an unlimited supply, the facilities could process more than 700 million tons per year. Norway, Sweden, and other European nations are frantically exploring cost-effective ways of procuring more garbage.

That’s right—Norwegians want trash so much, they’re importing it from other countries. Garbage has become a commodity.

But this isn’t just about garbage. It’s not even just about sustainability. It’s much bigger than that. It’s about finding value where previously there was none. Yesterday’s trash is tomorrow’s treasure.

I help organizations to become more anticipatory, identifying the Hard Trends that will happen so they can see what’s coming next. Ask yourself what it will mean for your business when something that was once a liability becomes an asset. How can you learn to spot value where others see only waste?

This is not the first time there’s been a sea change in the way we think of what we toss out. The recycling revolution got us to start seeing soda cans and scrap paper in a whole new light: not fit for one-time use, but part of a cycle of reuse and renewability. And that idea kick-started an entire industry.

Burning garbage for energy will have a huge effect on the recycling industry. Procurement costs for companies that make products out of recycled materials might skyrocket. This in turn could lead to debates about whether garbage is more cost-effective as recycling fodder or as energy source.

Huge opportunities are awaiting visionary companies. Think about the components these incinerating facilities need—someone will have to make and sell them. Even more companies will be needed to handle the logistics of getting garbage from seller to buyer. New standards will need to be established, regulations enacted. Will garbage be sold by weight or volume? Will garbage futures be bought and sold on the market? We can imagine a future where coalitions of garbage incinerating companies—along with their own researchers, spokespeople, and lobbyists—become an important part of the business landscape.

Is all this really going to happen? Should you start writing a business plan for your garbage-incinerating company? Garbage as an energy source is the Soft Trend—it might happen in your area. What I like most about Soft Trends is that you can influence them. In this case, if you want to use garbage as an energy source, you can take positive action to make it happen in an environmentally friendly way.

The Hard Trend that will happen, is the unfolding energy revolution. Our traditional energy sources such as oil, coal, and natural gas, will continue to play a significant role in the future, but they will be increasingly integrated with alternative energy sources now that game-changing new energy storage systems are eliminating many of the problems that have been holding wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources back. As the amount of global garbage increases and the global need for energy increases, we will need to re-examine many of our basic beliefs about the way we live, the way we do business, and the way we innovate.

We need to take fundamental beliefs—that garbage is garbage, for instance—and turn them on their heads. Both the need and the disruption are coming. And it won’t stop at garbage or energy. Now is a good time to ask yourself; what other liabilities could become assets? For that matter, what assets could become liabilities?

The future of your business could very well depend on your ability to look at the Hard Trends that are shaping the future and use those future facts to \shape a positive future for all.

?2015 Burrus Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight.