with, cook with, or drink the contaminated water which has caused millions of disease cases and deaths. “between 400,000 and 1 million people die each year in developing countries because of diseases caused by mismanaged waste, estimates poverty charity tearfund”. society has the means to decrease or even eliminate this way of death and save millions of lives by providing the simple human necessity of clean water. utilization resource recovery 'waste not the waste' sign in tamil nadu, india this section is an excerpt from resource recovery. resource recovery is using wastes as an input material to create valuable products as new outputs. the aim is to reduce the amount of waste generated, thereby reducing the need for landfill space, and optimising the values created from waste. resource recovery delays the need to use raw materials in the manufacturing process. materials found in municipal solid waste, construction and demolition waste, commercial waste and industrial wastes can be used to recover resources for the manufacturing of new materials and products. plastic, paper, aluminium, glass and metal are examples of where value can be found in waste. resource recovery goes further than just the management of waste. resource recovery is part of a circular economy, in which the extraction of natural resources and generation of wastes are minimised, and in which materials and products are designed more sustainably for durability, reuse, repairability, remanufacturing and recycling. life-cycle analysis (lca) can be used to compare the resource recovery potential of different treatment technologies. resource recovery can also be an aim in the context of sanitation. here, the term refers to approaches to recover the resources that are contained in wastewater and human excreta (urine and feces). the term "toilet resources" has come into use recently. those resources include: nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), organic matter, energy and water. this concept is also referred to as ecological sanitation. separation of waste flows can help make resource recovery simpler. examples include keeping urine separate from feces (as in urine diversion toilets) and keeping greywater and blackwater separate. people who earn their living by collecting and sorting garbage and selling them for recycling (waste pickers), smokey mountain, philippines. energy recovery energy recovery from waste is using non-recyclable waste materials and extracting from it heat, electricity, or energy through a variety of processes, including combustion, gasification, pyrolyzation, and anaerobic digestion. this process is referred to as waste-to-energy. there are several ways to recover energy from waste. anaerobic digestion is a naturally occurring process of decomposition where organic matter is reduced to a simpler chemical component in the absence of oxygen. incineration or direct controlled burning of municipal solid waste to reduce waste and make energy. secondary recovered fuel is the energy recovery from waste that cannot be reused or recycled from mechanical and biological treatment activities. pyrolysis involves heating of waste, with the absence of oxygen, to high temperatures to break down any carbon content into a mixture of gaseous and liquid fuels and solid residue. gasification is the conversion of carbon rich material through high temperature with partial oxidation into a gas stream. plasma arc heating is the very high heating of municipal solid waste to temperatures ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 °c, where energy is released by an electrical discharge in an inert atmosphere. using waste as fuel can offer important environmental benefits. it can provide a safe and cost-effective option for wastes that would normally have to be dealt with through disposal. it can help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by diverting energy use from fossil fuels, while also generating energy and using waste as fuel can reduce the methane emissions generated in landfills by averting waste from landfills. there is some debate in the classification of certain biomass feedstock as wastes. crude tall oil (cto), a co-product of the pulp and papermaking process, is defined as a waste or residue in some european countries when in fact it is produced “on purpose” and has significant value add potential in industrial applications. several companies use cto to produce fuel, while the pine chemicals industry maximizes it as a feedstock “producing low-carbon, bio-based chemicals” through cascading use. education and awareness education and awareness in the area of waste and waste management is increasingly important from a global perspective of resource management. the talloires declaration is a declaration for sustainability concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources. local, regional, and global air pollution; accumulation and distribution of toxic wastes; destruction and depletion of forests, soil, and water; depletion of the ozone layer and emission of "green house" gases threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living species, the integrity of the earth and its biodiversity, the security of nations, and the heritage of future generations. several universities have implemented the talloires declaration by establishing environmental management and waste management programs, e.g. the waste management university project. university and vocational education are promoted by various organizations, e.g. wamitab and chartered institution of wastes management. gallery vegetable waste being dumped in a market in hyderabad weapon scraps agobox; bio-medical waste hospital waste waste collected in a tricycle shacks and littering by illegal immigrants in south africa used cigarette boxes recycling point at the gdańsk university of technology containers for selective waste collection at the gdańsk university of technology