🚯The Problem

Waste: Problem or Resource?

Waste

As population, wealth, the digital world, and consumption grow, so does the amount of waste. The World Bank estimates that global waste production will increase by 70% by 2050. According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, it will also be the year when the mass of plastic waste in the oceans could exceed the mass of fish stocks. Not only are these trends a threat to our health and the environment, but every kilogram of waste buried in a landfill is a kilogram of a resource that can never be used again.

We already knew that e-waste was also a major problem, but in 2022, the UN e-waste coalition and the World Economic Forum released alarming figures: a recent study by the UN e-waste coalition and the World Economic Forum estimates that 50 million tonnes of e-waste are generated every year, rising to 120 million tonnes by 2050. Just to put it into perspective, 50 million tonnes are more than the combined weight of all commercial aircraft produced to date.

The market for waste recovery is growing in tandem with the waste mountain: from $303.6 billion in 2017, it could reach $484.9 billion by 2025, an annual growth rate of 6 percent. With landfills overflowing and the oceans littered with plastic, it's no wonder that waste management majors and startups are working on innovative ways to recover valuable resources.

Digitalization

With the explosion of the modern western way of life, we need more and more energy, and digitalization is making it even more so. Unfortunately, the growing demand for energy in today's world is also increasing the presence of fossil energy, as 'conventional' renewable energy is unable to provide a continuous supply of energy. This is a serious problem for future generations.

Moreover, the widespread spread of digitalization means that we need less and less labor, while the world's population is growing at an unprecedented rate. There is, therefore, a very strong demand for sustainable passive income.

Unfortunately, the majority of blockchain market players do not have a real, value-based business model that could almost immediately provide a long-term sustainable, guaranteed passive income to a wide range of investors, be they small investors or large investors (whales). Their business model only seems to work well as long as a large number of investors keep pouring capital into them, i.e., they operate like a Ponzi scheme. As soon as the inflow of capital stops, their ecosystem usually collapses, and their stock price, and thus the capital invested and the passive income, become worthless.