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You tie off the bag, set it at the curb, and a truck takes it away. Where it goes next depends on where you live, and for a large share of the world the answer is a pile in the open air.How much waste there is The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published its Global Waste Management Outlook in 2024. As Waste Management World reported, the outlook projects that municipal solid waste will grow from 2.3 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050. An earlier World Bank report, What a Waste 2.0, counted 2.01 billion tonnes in 2016 and projected 3.40 billion tonnes by 2050. The two reports use different base years, but both put the 2050 total far above today's.Open dumps lack basic protection A sanitary landfill has a liner, a daily soil cover, and pipes that collect gas. An open dump has none of those. The World Bank's What a Waste data page says at least 33 percent of the world's waste is mismanaged, which it defines as open dumping or burning. If you live near one, you notice it before you read any report: the smell, the trucks that arrive before dawn, the smoke on a dry afternoon. Rain moves through those piles and carries what it dissolves into soil and water. Fires start on their own or get set by people, and the smoke drifts into nearby neighborhoods.Methane from buried waste Food scraps, paper, and yard waste rot without oxygen once a landfill buries them. That process produces methane, a greenhouse gas. In July 2025, a team led by Cheng Tianhai at the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a study in Nature Climate Change. The team used satellite data to find and measure 367 methane plumes across 102 landfills worldwide. According to the release on EurekAlert, the study found that landfills produce 18 percent of human-caused methane emissions. Open dumps emit 4.8 times more methane on average than engineered sanitary landfills. That gap shows that the type of site changes the methane output as much as its size does. The team also found that the EDGAR emissions database, maintained by the European Union, underestimates emissions from the worst open dumps by about fivefold.The bill for managing it UNEP put the direct cost of managing municipal solid waste at USD 252 billion in 2020. Once the hidden costs of pollution, poor health, and climate change are included, the figure rises to USD 361 billion. Without urgent action, UNEP says, the annual cost could almost double to USD 640.3 billion by 2050. City budgets pay for trucks, land, and cleanup, and a growing city needs more of each. A mayor who has to choose between a new school and a new disposal site feels that number in a very direct way.Why digging more holes does not solve it Cities run short of land close to where people live, and nobody wants a new dump next door. Cities that cannot afford liners and gas collection keep dumping in the open. Each of these problems traces back to the same choice: burying waste treats it as something with no further use. Food scraps and farm residue hold energy, and a hole in the ground wastes it. Cities that want a different result need equipment they can afford, install quickly, and run with local crews.Where Nexus Biofuel fits Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, British Columbia, works on the other side of that choice. The company converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy. Its equipment is portable and economical, and it avoids incineration. Because the units move, a town does not have to build a large central plant before it can start. Waste that goes into an energy conversion unit does not go into a dump.Nexus Biofuel aims to cut reliance on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it aims to create jobs where its equipment operates. The landfill problem is large, and no single company will close it. Cities, national governments, and private firms each hold part of the answer. Portable equipment gives a smaller town or a remote community a way to act on its own waste without waiting years for a large public project to finish. A waste stream that becomes energy is one fewer pile to manage.

The world's landfill problem, and what comes after it

You watch the truck tip its load and drive away. The waste is out of sight, but it does not go away. Most of it stays in the ground for decades, and what it does there is now a measured problem, not a guess.How much waste the world makes The World Bank's report What a Waste 2.0 put global municipal solid waste at 2.01 billion tonnes a year and projected 3.40 billion tonnes by 2050. The UN Environment Programme's Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 uses newer numbers: 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023, rising to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050. The two reports use different baseline years and methods, and both show steady growth.UNEP also puts a price on it. In 2020, direct waste management costs reached USD 252 billion. Adding hidden costs from pollution, poor health and climate change raises that figure to USD 361 billion. UNEP says the annual cost could almost double to USD 640.3 billion by 2050 without urgent action.What buried waste does to the air Food scraps, paper and yard waste rot without oxygen once a landfill covers them. That process releases methane, a greenhouse gas. A 2024 study in Nature Sustainability, led by Yao Wang, estimates that landfills produce about 10% of human-caused methane emissions, roughly 50 teragrams a year.The same study found that standard inventories undercount the problem. Those inventories rely on an IPCC decay model, and the authors corrected its decay constant using data on waste composition and local conditions. Their corrected estimates run up to 200% higher for individual landfills. They argue that monitoring and cutting landfill methane is among the most cost-effective ways to meet current climate goals.Dumps without controls A landfill is at least a managed site. Many places have something worse. The World Bank states that at least 33% of the world's waste is mismanaged through open dumping or burning. The report counts both practices as mismanagement.If you live near an open dump, you see the pile grow and you smell it. Burning, the topic of a later post in this series, adds smoke to the picture. Neither practice produces anything useful from the material.Why more landfill space does not settle it Cities can dig new landfills, and many do. The UNEP figures show the bill rising anyway, and the methane study shows the climate cost is larger than earlier inventories reported. A site that fills up also needs a replacement, and land near a city is limited.Where Nexus Biofuel fits Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, BC, converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy. Its equipment is portable and economical, and the process avoids incineration. The company aims to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, cut greenhouse gas emissions and create jobs.That approach treats waste as a fuel source instead of a burial problem. Material that would rot in a landfill or burn in an open pile becomes energy that a community can use. Nexus Biofuel's goal is to make that option available to cities and towns that cannot afford large, fixed facilities.

What a landfill costs after the trucks leave

You tie off the bag, set it at the curb, and the truck takes it away. For most people the story ends there. For the waste, a second life begins in a landfill or an open dump, and the way the world manages that second life is a growing problem. This post looks at the scale of it, using figures from named sources, including the World Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).The world makes more waste every year The World Bank says the world generates 2.01 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste each year and expects that figure to reach 3.40 billion tonnes by 2050. UNEP published newer numbers in its Global Waste Management Outlook 2024. According to Dawn's coverage of the report, the world produced 2.3 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste in 2023, and UNEP projects 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050.The two organizations count differently, so their totals differ. Both point the same way. Every year brings more waste than the last, and every tonne needs a destination.Consider what that means for a mid-sized city. Its collection crews, transfer stations, and disposal sites were built for the waste of an earlier decade. Each year the trucks carry more, and the sites fill faster than planners expected.Not every tonne reaches a proper landfill A well-run landfill has liners, drainage, and a system to collect gas. Much of the world's waste never meets one. The World Bank says at least 33 percent of waste is not managed in an environmentally safe way.UNEP gives a sharper number for 2020: 38 percent, or 810 million tonnes, was uncontrolled, meaning people dumped it or burned it in the open. Dawn reports that under current practices this amount could reach 1.6 billion tonnes a year by 2050.Picture a hillside at the edge of a fast-growing city. Trucks tip their loads onto open ground. Rain can wash whatever leaks from the pile toward the nearest stream. When the pile catches fire, the smoke settles over the neighbouring streets.What rotting waste releases Food scraps, yard waste, and paper break down without oxygen under the layers of a landfill, and that process produces methane. A study in Science Advances used high-resolution satellite images of Delhi, Mumbai, Lahore, and Buenos Aires. The Irish outlet Tipperary Live reports that city-level methane emissions for 2018 and 2019 were 1.4 to 2.6 times higher than earlier estimates.Lead author Joannes Maasakkers of the Netherlands Institute for Space Research said this was the first time researchers used high-resolution satellite images to observe landfills. The same report describes landfills as the third-largest source of methane emissions globally, after oil and gas systems and agriculture.Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway, University of London, who was not part of the study, called for better landfill management, especially in India, where landfills often catch fire.What the problem costs UNEP puts the direct cost of waste management in 2020 at about $252 billion worldwide. Once hidden costs such as pollution, health, and climate effects are counted, the figure rises to $361 billion.Dawn reports that without urgent action, UNEP expects the annual cost to reach $640.3 billion by 2050, including $443 billion in externalities. Whether you live next to a dump or a thousand kilometres from one, someone pays that bill.Where Nexus Biofuel fits Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, British Columbia, works on the part of this problem that starts before the waste reaches a dump. The company converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy. Its equipment is portable and economical, and it avoids incineration.Nexus Biofuel aims to cut reliance on fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create jobs. A city or community that turns its waste into energy gives that waste a use, and sends less of it to a landfill.Waste does not pile up in one place. It builds up in cities, farming districts, and small towns, each with its own mix of material. Equipment that is portable and economical suits places like these, because it gives them another option besides a dump or an incinerator.

What happens to your trash after the truck leaves

When the fire is the disposal plan: open burning and Asia's smog Picture a farmer in northern India at the end of the rice harvest. The field is full of stubble, the next crop goes in within weeks, and a match is the fastest way to clear the ground. Now picture a city edge in another country where uncollected household waste piles up and someone sets it alight to shrink the heap. Neither person wants dirty air. Both are solving a disposal problem with the only tool within reach.What the research says about farm fires Burning crop residue gets much of the blame for the haze that settles over Delhi each autumn, and the science is more cautious than the headlines. A 2025 study by Akash Biswal and colleagues, published through the Royal Society of Chemistry, modeled how much fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the Delhi region came from crop residue burning in Punjab and Haryana. The authors put the share at 18 percent in 2022, 16 percent in 2023 and 9 percent in 2024.The authors also note that the 2024 drop may be partly a measurement gap. Farmers may have shifted burning to the evening, when satellites are less likely to detect fires, and sensors in rural Punjab still recorded high PM2.5. The study shows how hard it is to assign a fixed share of a city's smog to one source. It does not show that the fires are harmless.Burning waste adds a second fuel Farm residue is one fuel. Household and commercial waste is another. A review commissioned by Engineering X, a body founded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Lloyd's Register Foundation, and carried out by the University of Leeds with the International Solid Waste Association, found that about half a billion tonnes of municipal solid waste (24 percent of the world total) is never collected. Another 27 percent is mismanaged after collection. The review says much of this waste ends up burned in the open.The same review says open burning harms the health of tens of millions of people, and that the true number is unknown because few places measure it. It also lists persistent organic pollutants among the emissions, along with compounds linked to cancer and to developmental and immune damage. The world's 11 million waste pickers work closest to these fires.What the air costs people The World Health Organization estimates that outdoor air pollution caused about 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2019. Its fact sheet, updated in October 2024, adds that 99 percent of the world's population lived in places where air quality fell short of WHO guideline levels that year. Those totals cover every source, from traffic to power plants to fires. Open burning is one contributor among many, and no source cited here splits the total by cause.For a family in a smog-bound city, the cause matters less than the result: closed windows, sick days and children kept indoors. A parent checking an air quality app before school drop-off lives with the numbers above, whether the smoke came from a field, a rubbish heap or a tailpipe.Why bans alone do not work Governments can prohibit burning, and several have tried. A ban leaves the original question unanswered, though. What does a farmer do with the stubble, and what does a city do with waste that trucks never reach? The Leeds review makes the same point from the other side: ending open burning would add as much as a billion tonnes of waste that someone has to treat and dispose of. That waste needs a destination, and the destination needs to be affordable and close to where the waste starts.Large plants take years and heavy capital to build, and they need reliable roads and collection routes. Many of the places with the worst burning have neither.Nexus Biofuel's role Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, British Columbia, works on this gap. The company converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy with portable, economical equipment that avoids incineration. Because the equipment moves, it can go to the waste instead of waiting for the waste to reach a distant facility. Nexus Biofuel aims to cut reliance on fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create jobs in the communities it serves. Giving farmers and cities a use for their residue and waste other than fire is the problem this technology is built to address.

Open burning and Asia's smog

Picture a rice harvest in northern India or Pakistan. The grain is in, the straw is left, and wheat has to go into the ground within weeks. A match clears the field in an afternoon. Multiply that by millions of fields, add the rubbish fires at the edges of towns, and you get the smoke that settles over South Asia.The numbers behind the haze IQAir's 2023 World Air Quality Report, as reported by Al Jazeera, put Bangladesh's average PM2.5 at 79.9 micrograms per cubic metre. That is nearly 16 times the WHO guideline of 5. Pakistan averaged 73.7 and India 54.4. Among cities, Begusarai in India averaged 118.9, Lahore 99.5, New Delhi 92.7 and Dhaka 80.2. The report found 83 Indian cities above ten times the WHO limit. San Juan, Puerto Rico, the cleanest city in the report, averaged 2.7.The Air Quality Life Index from the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute, published in August 2023, estimates that PM2.5 cuts the average Indian's life expectancy by 5.3 years and a New Delhi resident's by 10 years. An Imperial College London review from April 2023, also cited by Al Jazeera, links air pollution to low birth weight, miscarriages and stillbirths.You do not need a monitor to notice it. If you live in one of these cities, you smell the smoke before you read the number, and your children breathe it on the walk to school.Fields on fire Researchers at Harvard University and MIT studied crop residue burning in India and published their findings in Nature Communications in November 2022. They link the burning to between 44,000 and 98,000 premature deaths from PM2.5 every year. Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh account for 67 to 90 percent of those deaths.Six districts in Punjab stand out. According to the authors, they account for 40 percent of India's population exposure to fire-related PM2.5 and about 27,000 premature deaths. Coarse rice varieties leave more residue per unit of crop, and the districts sit largely upwind of densely populated areas. The study also found that 88 to 95 percent of the impact from Indian burning falls inside India. Smoke from Indian burning does reach Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan, though those countries see only 0.24 to 12 percent of the exposure that India sees.The authors offer two ways to reduce the harm. Burning two hours earlier in the day could avert up to 14 percent of the impact, or about 10,000 deaths a year in Punjab. Growing varieties such as basmati, which leave less residue, could cut it further.Why the fires keep burning Al Jazeera reports that Punjab in Pakistan has banned crop burning, yet farmers keep doing it illegally, possibly because the alternatives cost too much. A ban removes the match but leaves the straw. A farmer with a short window between harvests still needs somewhere for the straw to go, and a town with a pile of rubbish needs the same.Rubbish fires add to the load Fields are one source. The IQAir report also names plastic rubbish incineration as a contributor to worsening air quality in Bangladesh.The WHO puts the global toll in context. Its 2018 release estimated that ambient air pollution alone caused some 4.2 million deaths in 2016, and that cooking with polluting fuels and technologies caused about 3.8 million more. WHO also estimated that around 90 percent of the world's population breathes polluted air.Where Nexus Biofuel fits Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, BC, converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy. Crop residue is biomass, and household rubbish is municipal solid waste. Both are waste streams the company's process is built to handle, and its equipment avoids incineration, so it does not replace one open fire with another.The equipment is portable and economical. A farmer, a town or a city that cannot afford a large fixed plant can bring the equipment to the waste instead of hauling the waste to a plant.Burning is cheap and fast, and the people who breathe the smoke pay for it later. Nexus Biofuel aims to cut fossil fuel reliance and greenhouse gas emissions, and to create jobs, by treating straw and rubbish as energy sources. That gives a farmer or a town a reason to keep waste out of the fire, and it gives a city a way to clear the air without waiting for the next harvest to end.

Smoke over South Asia: what burning waste and farm fields does to the air

Late October in northern India has a smell. Farmers in Punjab and Haryana finish the rice harvest, then set fire to the stalks left standing in their fields. Within days a brown haze settles over towns and cities, Delhi among them. If you live downwind, you taste it before you see it.Fields on fire NASA's Earth Observatory describes crop burning as the main source of the haze over northern India, especially in Punjab and Haryana, where farmers grow rice and wheat. The practice is recent. Combine harvesters became popular in the 1980s and leave stalks several inches tall. According to NASA, burning is the quickest and cheapest way to clear that debris before farmers plant wheat.A NASA Goddard scientist told the observatory that without cheap, easy alternatives, farmers have little reason to stop. NASA also reported that, based on its Aqua satellite, fires in the Indo-Gangetic Plain rose about 300 percent between 2003 and 2017. The smoke does not stay near the fields. NASA researchers found that particles and gases regularly travel several hundred miles.Rubbish on fire Fields are one source. Garbage is another. A 2014 study led by Christine Wiedinmyer of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, published in Environmental Science &amp; Technology, estimated that about 40 percent of the world's waste, some 1.1 billion tons, burns in open piles. The authors found that open burning releases more pollution than regional and global inventories show.Scientific American, reporting on the study, said trash fires account for as much as 29 percent of global human-caused emissions of small particulate matter. The same report gave open burning about 10 percent of mercury emissions and about 40 percent of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These figures cover the whole world and date from 2014, so treat them as an estimate of scale rather than a count for any one Asian city.A season with a calendar The burn follows the harvest. In 2018, NASA reported, fires began in early October near Amritsar, and by the end of the month large numbers burned across Punjab and Haryana. Burning typically peaks in the first week of November. A NASA Goddard scientist, Hiren Jethva, said at the time that fire counts and PM2.5 levels in New Delhi were rising together.That timing matters if you live in the region. The stalks go up in smoke over a few weeks, and the cities downwind absorb the particles over the same few weeks.Rubbish fires have no season. They burn whenever the pile gets large enough to be a nuisance.What the smoke does to people The World Health Organization estimates that outdoor air pollution caused 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2019. About 89 percent of those deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries. WHO also reports that 99 percent of the world's population lived in places that did not meet its air quality guidelines that year.The Wiedinmyer study adds a climate figure: carbon dioxide from trash burning is about 5 percent of total global CO2 emissions. WHO names open incineration of solid waste among the practices that cleaner options can replace. Where burning cannot be avoided, it says, combustion technology needs strict emission controls.Two waste streams, one match Look at the two fires side by side. Rice straw is biomass. Household and commercial rubbish is municipal solid waste. Both pile up on a schedule, both cost money to move, and both burn for free. NASA's scientist put the farmer's side of it plainly: cheap alternatives are missing. The same logic applies to a dump where nobody collects the waste.Any fix has to give straw and rubbish a use that pays for itself, so that nobody needs to light them. That means equipment a village or a district can afford, move and run, and a product someone wants to buy. Energy fits that description.Nexus Biofuel Inc., based in Kelowna, British Columbia, converts waste streams, including biomass and municipal solid waste, into usable energy. Its equipment is portable and economical, and it avoids incineration. The company aims to cut reliance on fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create jobs. Because the equipment is portable, the processing can go to the waste, which suits waste that is expensive to haul. A waste stream that produces energy has a buyer, and that gives a farmer or a city a reason to keep the match in the drawer.

Where Asia's smog comes from: burning fields and burning rubbish

Nexus BioFuel Inc

Nexus Biofuel Inc. is a Kelowna, BC, Canada company that developed the world's first economically viable portable waste-to-energy system. We convert organic waste streams — including agricultural, forestry, and municipal waste — into clean, renewable fuel using a compact, portable unit that requires no incineration and produces no harmful emissions. Our technology serves communities, farms, and industries of any size across Canada and internationally. We are committed to clean energy innovation, environmental sustainability, and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

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The world's landfill problem, and what comes after it

What a landfill costs after the trucks leave

What happens to your trash after the truck leaves

Open burning and Asia's smog

Smoke over South Asia: what burning waste and farm fields...

Where Asia's smog comes from: burning fields and burning ...