Title: Zero Waste and Circular Economy in Pakistan
Abstract:
A zero waste concept is intended to valorize waste sources as renewable feedstock to recover value-added chemicals, materials, alternative fuels, and energy. This concept integrates waste treatment, resource recovery, alternative fuels, and energy generation to shift from fossil-based linear economies to circular economies. Although the traditional linear economies have resulted in rapid economic growth, but at the cost of increasing energy demands, environmental pollution, and climate change. The Paris COP21 summit has recently set out a roadmap to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions to keep global warming to ‘well below 2oC’. Like global warming, the tremendous waste generation and its unsustainable disposal have emerged as a potential threat to our civilization. It is estimated that the current waste generation rate will escalate by three times by 2025. Traditional waste remediation methods involve waste removal from collection points and disposal in designated dumping sites where waste valorization to generate energy and other value-added products is rarely performed. These sites have become a major source of GHGs emissions contributing to climate change. As a result, nations now focus on treating or refining waste instead of disposing, striving to recover energy and value-added products from waste to achieve a circular economy. In better words, using closed-loop waste bioprocessing units, the inherent net positive energy contained in solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes is harnessed and utilized as energy carriers. Despite their promising features, these individual processing technologies cannot handle the huge volume of waste at a single platform to achieve zero waste concept. They suffer from limited efficiencies and high capital and maintenance costs. Therefore, if these waste processing or waste-to-energy technologies could be integrated through the under-one-roof concept of a waste-driven factory, a significant part of wastes can be treated by various specialized techniques, while their outputs (heat, power, and fuel) could suffice the operating requirements of each other. An array of products including heat, power, fuel, and value-added chemicals, enzymes, and materials would be available, not only to run the waste-driven factory by itself but to support the national electric grids, vehicular gas stations, combined heat and power (CHP) units, and domestic heating and industrial furnaces. However, such waste-driven factories’ overall sustainability should be assessed through various tools, including life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), and exergy.
Biography:
Dr. Abdul-Sattar Nizami has Master of Science from the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and Ph.D. in Sustainable Gaseous Biofuel from University College Cork, Ireland. He worked at the University of Toronto, Canada as a Postdoctoral Fellow on alternative fuels and life cycle studies in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry. Later, he served as an Assistant Professor and Head of Solid Waste Management Unit at the Center of Excellence in Environmental Studies (CEES) of King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He is currently working as an Associate Professor at Sustainable Development Study Centre (SDSC), Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan. Dr. Abdul-Sattar Nizami is top 2% Scientists Worldwide, Senior Editor in Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews (Elsevier – IF 14.98), Associate Editor in Energy & Environment (Sage – IF 2.95), Associate Editor in Frontiers in Energy Research (Frontiers, IF 4.008), Co-Editor-in-Chief in Elsevier Book Series on Biomass and Biofuels, Selected as Role Model by US Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and Fellow of Irish Research Stimulus Fund.