- In 2024, Amazon delivered over 9 billion packages globally3
- Approximately 30% of the total 2.13 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated is sent to landfill2
- Austria and Wales are the best household recyclers with a 59% recycling rate4
While the use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and e-commerce have cast a long shadow across other industries’ innovation in recent years, this week, we highlight two key developments across the waste management industry that are supporting growing global consumption while making our planet more sustainable.
Landfill gas capture
Despite efforts to reduce, re-use and recycle, some 13.1 million metric tonnes of the UKs MSW is sent to landfills a year according to the most recent data. Indeed some 641 million metric tonnes is thought to be landfilled per year globally, and while different factors like humidity and temperature effect decomposition rate, timescales can be extensive with a single plastic bottle estimated to take over 450 years to fully biodegrade.
This has created an opportunity within the waste management sector, since when this waste biodegrades it emits landfill gasses which primarily contain methane and carbon dioxide. Sophisticated wells and pipes on the roof of landfills can now collect these gasses, clear them of impurities, separate and convert them to electricity to be used within homes or as renewable natural gas, which can be used as fuel.
The capturing of this gas and converting it to resalable products not only has environmental, but also financial benefits since waste management businesses can benefit from this new revenue stream and reduce their own hefty costs of rubbish collection by using their own made fuel to power their fleet1.
Source: World Economic Forum 2022
Packaging reform
Integrated waste management businesses, but also specialised recyclers are investing heavily in their own technology and infrastructure to meet increased demand thanks to regulatory advancement within the goods packaging space. Amazon’s packaging within the UK and Europe has been 100% recyclable since 2023 and Apple use 99% recyclable materials for products like the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch series 9 for example.
Cutting edge censors, cameras and high-speed intelligent sorting innovations enable recycling facilities to not only meet this increasing demand but also scale operations for the future – since as economies develop, and we become wealthier, we tend to consume more. Artificial intelligence and robotics are at the heart of this new technology, enabling companies like AMP Robotics to sort 10,000-12,000+ items per hour per machine compared to an average manual sorting power of 800-1,000 items per hour.
This space is ever evolving with blockchain technology recently being utilised to increase waste traceability and smart bins being deployed across Singapore which monitor fill levels and send alerts to the relevant maintenance team for timely and efficient collection.
Bowmore portfolios
We invest thematically to global waste and water solutions via Regnan’s Sustainable Water and Waste fund. The fund was one of the first to have completed the requisite FCA process to use a label under the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) sustainability disclosure requirements (SDR). As such, it has achieved the ‘Sustainability Focus’ label, which denotes that the fund invests at least 70% in assets that are sustainable for people and/or the planet, as determined using evidenced-based standards which the portfolio managers regard as wholly robust.
The allocation also brings diversifying and defensive qualities across core and ESG portfolios, with little correlation to the US technology sector, strong pricing power and stability of cashflows. It has provided support year to date, returning 1.9% vs US large caps -5.6% and global technologies -7.3%.
Source: LSEG DataStream, data as at 05/06/2025
The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Sources:
1 Regnan, 2025
2 The Earth and I, 2025
3 Chain store age, 2025
4 Business Green, 2025