Waste
4% of 37 billion tonnes per year
Decarbonisation Pathway| 7 Sectorsmore details
| Sector | Emissions today | Decarbonisation pathway |
|---|---|---|
| Landfill | Very high — decomposing organic waste is the dominant waste emission source; methane is 80x more potent than CO₂ over 20 years; existing closed landfill continues emitting for decades, a long tail that cannot be fully abated | Improvable but structurally limited — landfill gas capture and conversion to energy (LFG-to-power) is investable today; capping closed sites reduces but cannot eliminate legacy emissions; the long-run solution is diverting organic waste out of landfill entirely |
| Food waste | High in aggregate — food and garden waste is the primary feedstock for landfill methane | High-leverage opportunity — diversion to composting or anaerobic digestion reduces methane and produces soil amendment or biogas; relatively low-cost abatement |
| Wastewater treatment | Moderate — methane and nitrous oxide from biological treatment of sewage and industrial effluent | Transitioning — anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge captures methane for biogas; energy-positive treatment plants already operating in leading markets |
| Incineration | Moderate — burning waste releases CO₂, particularly from plastic (fossil carbon); also NOx and particulates | Mixed — waste-to-energy reduces landfill methane but locks in fossil carbon combustion; bio-fraction incineration is carbon-neutral in accounting terms; net benefit depends heavily on what it displaces |
| Plastics & packaging | High in lifecycle terms — fossil carbon embedded in plastics is released at end of life via incineration or slow degradation | Early transition — mechanical and chemical recycling reducing virgin plastic demand; extended producer responsibility regulation accelerating; a long tail given plastic's durability |
| Industrial waste | Moderate — chemical, medical and industrial waste streams require specialist treatment | Slow improvement — treatment technologies mature; emissions reduction follows industrial decarbonisation upstream; reducing waste generation is the highest-leverage lever |
| Construction & demolition | Moderate — large volumes of inert and mixed waste; embodied carbon in demolished materials is lost | Early stage — material passports, deconstruction over demolition, and aggregate recycling beginning to enter mainstream practice; follows the broader built environment sustainability agenda |
Carbon Capture
Fugu
FeaturedAustralia
Fugu's proposition is that Direct Air Capture will only reach gigaton scale through radical modularity — units small enough to manufacture at volume in a factory, deploy anywhere, and aggregate into large arrays. Their modular DAC units are designed to be fully self-contained, powered by co-located renewable energy, and deployable at locations where captured CO₂ can be sequestered nearby — such as above basalt formations suitable for mineralisation. The modularity also addresses the cost reduction challenge: learning curve effects are far more powerful in high-volume manufactured products than in custom-engineered large plants. Fugu takes inspiration from how solar panels achieved cost reductions through repetitive manufacturing, and applies that logic to carbon capture hardware. The company is early-stage but is part of a growing cluster of startups betting that modular, distributed DAC is the only path to the scale the climate problem demands.
Founders
Investors
Investible
AspiraDAC
Australia
AspiraDAC is developing modular, solar-powered direct air capture units with the energy supply co-located and integrated — designed for deployment in sunny, remote locations with access to geological storage.
Carbon Engineering
Canada
Carbon Engineering is a Canadian direct air capture pioneer focused on large industrial-scale CO₂ removal plants — now a wholly owned subsidiary of Oxy Low Carbon Ventures.
Climeworks
Switzerland
Climeworks operates the world's largest commercial direct air capture plant in Iceland, permanently mineralising CO₂ in basalt rock and selling verified removal credits to corporate buyers.
Graphyte
India
Graphyte removes carbon by drying and compressing biomass waste into dense bricks that are buried underground — a simple, low-cost approach to permanent carbon removal at potentially large scale.
hydrophisgas
UK
Hydrophis Gas uses biomimicry of sea snake respiration to develop membrane and enzymatic processes for separating CO₂ from seawater, aiming to deploy via existing desalination infrastructure as a scalable ocean-based carbon removal pathway.
Kapture
Australia
Melbourne startup that retrofits modular carbon capture devices onto diesel generators — capturing up to 95% of CO₂ emissions and converting them into calcium carbonate for permanent sequestration into concrete, targeting 120 million generators worldwide.
Lithos
USA
Lithos Carbon is the leader in Enhanced Rock Weathering — applying basalt rock dust to US farmland to permanently capture CO₂ while improving crop yields, backed by Yale/Georgia Tech science and issuing the largest ERW carbon credit batch in history (5,160 tonnes) in 2025.
Noya
USA
Noya is a US startup that retrofits cooling towers and builds modular electrochemical units to capture CO₂ directly from the atmosphere — dramatically reducing capital costs versus purpose-built DAC facilities by leveraging existing industrial infrastructure.
RepAir
USA
RepAir has developed a solid-state electrochemical carbon capture technology inspired by batteries — capturing CO₂ from air or industrial exhaust using 70% less energy than incumbent thermal methods, with no heat, liquids, or solvents required.
Food Waste
Bardee
Australia
Bardee converts commercial food waste into high-protein insect meal and organic fertiliser using black soldier fly larvae — diverting waste from landfill while producing sustainable animal feed ingredients.
Bygen
Australia
Bygen converts biomass waste into commercially valuable activated carbon through pyrolysis — permanently sequestering carbon while producing a product with ready industrial markets.
Goterra
Australia
Goterra deploys autonomous modular insect bioconversion units on-site at food waste generators, converting organic waste into high-protein animal feed and fertiliser using black soldier fly larvae.
Landfill
Zen Robotics
Finland
ZenRobotics uses AI-powered robots to sort recyclable materials from mixed waste streams at industrial speed — replacing the manual sorting that makes recycling economics unviable at scale.
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