Find Uses For Waste Material

Sometimes uses can be found for waste materials --by-products, left-over materials or other resources discarded by individuals or companies. These materials can often be obtained free or at a very low cost and then processed to produce useful goods.

Some Examples

1. An American company buys older mainframe computers from corporations, salvages the precious metals and alloys, and recycles them for other products.

2. A businessman purchases infested lumber, peels the logs into thin strips, compresses them and sells the products as decorative wall panels.

3. An entrepreneur contacted a chicken processing plant which discarded large volumes of chicken feet and asked to take them away. He froze the feet, then sold and shipped them to China where they were cooked, combined with sauces, packaged and exported back to Canada as a dim sum delicacy.

4. A diesel generating plant uses its exhaust to heat an adjacent greenhouse that is able to grow vegetables in the winter to meet local market demand.

How To Do It

1. To find waste materials which can be reused:
   • take inventory of all products discarded from your existing business venture;
   • identify obsolete products which, although no longer used by a business or industry, remain in storage; and
   • observe materials collected by recycling companies, local waste product dumps, demolition specialists and junk pick-up services.
   
   

2. Read trade publications to identify byproducts which are causing problems for processing and manufacturing plants.

3. Read technology magazines to discover new processes which use waste products as a source of materials.

4. Contact the recycling hotline (604-360-3030 or 1-800-667-4321). Analyse the value of waste products to other producers. Consider whether these waste products may be used in their original form, as parts, or as material in a recycled form.

5. Develop new uses for existing materials to create a more-valuable end product.

6. Study ways in which waste products are recycled in other parts of the world, and develop similar systems in your area.

7. Talk to potential customers to determine whether they would buy your product.

Key Questions

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