Biorefinery Avenues for Processing Urban Solid Waste: Potential for Value-Added Chemicals and Energy

Global urbanization against rural settlements has been on a steady rise over the past 6 decades. Nearly one-third of the entire population of India residing in urban locations (roughly 5.5% of available residential land) has placed an unprecedented burden on the municipal economy, energy utilization, and waste management systems. Sustainability as regards resources and municipal solid waste (MSW) management remains a challenge. The focus of this chapter concerns these challenges, the various avenues for processing MSW, biorefinery approaches for de-novo generation of commercial products, energy, etc. Additionally, the sustainability of these approaches, cost to the taxpayer, and the conversion of MSW to value-added resources or energy are also discussed. Harnessing bioenergy from MSW biomass may be an attractive route for addressing the ongoing global energy crisis. Carbon dioxide can be trapped via reactive amines to reduce emissions and generate value-added compounds such as urea. Certain wastes within MSW can be processed to obtain glycerol-based compounds which have wide applications in industry. Segregated waste management strategies will help in selectively processing organic wastes using the biorefinery route, which entails broad-spectrum cellular/enzymatic tools to break down the organic material. Systematic management of MSW can be expected to be a major resource salvage route. Harvesting MSW is thus proposed here to be a vital mechanism to generate a circular bioeconomy aimed at sustainability and economic viability.