Dubai Carbon says there’s money in that leftover pizza or half-eaten turkey sandwich now making its way into your kitchen dustbin.
Wet organic waste such as leftover household food or restaurant waste can be converted using spinning technology and heat to create biosolid fuels.
Those environmentally friendly fuels can be sold for cash turning financially burdensome municipal garbage management into a new way of making money, not losing it, according to Dubai Carbon, the government agency charged with slashing emissions across the emirate.
"A new pilot programme under way is working to turn wet waste into a money generating fuel at new locations near source across the city by the end of March," says Ivano Ianelli, CEO of Dubai Carbon, told Gulf News in an interview.
“We’re trying to renovate a model that is old and outdated,” Ianelli said. “What we’re doing with this is transforming a liability into a revenue stream. The converted waste can be used as a fuel source anywhere there is a furnace.”
Rather than costing on average Dhs 6,000 per address, converted wet waste can be sold as a fuel source earning up to Dhs 2,000 per address on average every year.