Waste as a Resource: How Data and AI Cut Recycling Costs
What role does waste incineration play in the circular economy and in the transition What is the value of knowing what’s in your waste stream?
Wasteer founder Benedict von Spankeren talks about how data and AI improve profitability and prevent dangerous accidents for waste management companies.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- The economic gap between recycling and waste-to-energy margins, and what this means for market entry and finding customers.
- How dynamic pricing changes the business: moving away from flat fees and charging suppliers based on the actual energy value of their waste.
- The difficulty of passing on carbon taxes, and why plants now need proof of exactly which supplier delivered what.
The episode also discusses the challenge of getting experienced crane operators to actually use new technology on the floor.
This is the third episode in “Incineration in the Circular Economy,” a series sponsored by NEEW Ventures.
Video Impression
People
Benedict von Spankeren, Founder at Wasteer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedict-von-spankeren/
Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:46 The Rest of the Rest
02:43 Founding Wasteer at New Ventures
05:57 Where Wasteer Stands Today
07:07 Waste Analysis and Steering
09:40 Waste as a Resource
11:07 Waste-to-Energy vs Recycling
13:34 Cultural Resistance and the 99% Myth
17:40 Transparency Down the Value Chain
19:26 Pricing, Gate Fees, and CO2 Taxation
24:35 Calculating the ROI
28:35 Outro
About
WASTEER is a Berlin-based AI software company that helps waste treatment and energy-from-waste plants analyse incoming waste streams in real time. It uses camera and sensor data to detect contaminants, calculate waste composition and improve operational decisions so plants can run more safely and efficiently.
Its platform is built around digital tools for waste analysis, stream control and documentation, with the goal of reducing downtime, lowering costs and improving sustainability. WASTEER presents itself as a circular economy enabler by turning waste data into better material recovery, cleaner processes and more profitable plant operations.
Further Links
https://www.neew-ventures.com/
https://www.eew-energyfromwaste.com
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
Benedict von Spankeren: At the end, the better you know the input, the better you can control the output. The input is waste. I consider waste as a resource. So we should definitely take care of how can we get most out of the waste.
Patrick Hypscher: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.
This is the third episode of the series, Incineration in the Circular Economy. In the last episode, Sebastian Siewers, head of energy at EEW, told us how waste incineration helps us to carve out fossil fuels. Today, we look at the venture potential in the incineration process and how data and AI can improve security and profitability. If you want to get the key learnings from this conversation and an overview of upcoming circular economy events, please sign up for the Circularity.fm newsletter, which you can find at www.circularity.fm.
He studied industrial and product design and started his career as a consultant before joining New Ventures as a venture development manager. A bit more than three years ago, in January 2023, he founded Wasteer, the company that uses AI to optimize waste streams. Welcome, Benedict.
Benedict von Spankeren: Thanks.
[00:01:46] The Rest of the Rest
Patrick Hypscher: Benedict, you’re an expert when it comes to waste streams. What is personally one of your favorite waste streams?
Benedict von Spankeren: Well, we mainly look at the rest of the rest, so the classic black bin of waste. Is it my favorite waste stream? I guess right now that’s the one we earn our money with, but it’s also the most interesting one because that is the one no one really knows what to do about it. And that’s where we come into place.
Patrick Hypscher: water
exactly, so rest of the rest means in that case.
Benedict von Spankeren: I don’t know what you throw in your black bin, but that’s the classic stuff you really have no idea what to do with. It’s not bio-waste, it’s not plastic waste, it’s the rest of the rest. Of course there’s always a certain potential in it, but that’s quite tough to get out. I mean, that’s the reason why we’re here. But this, maybe I would consider it as my favourite waste stream.
[00:02:43] Founding Wasteer at New Ventures
Patrick Hypscher: And was this then also the starting point of Wasteer or how did it start in the first place?
Benedict von Spankeren: No, not at all. Yeah, I mean, if you would have asked me that seven years ago, I would have never said I’m going to work in the waste industry, for sure not. But yeah, I worked as a consultant, as you said before, for EEW, one of the biggest incineration companies in Germany. And there, yeah.
constantly thinking about digital strategies, what to do in the future, et cetera. yeah, step by step, came, it’s an ongoing process. It was an ongoing process to, at some point, realize if you really want to do innovation in that kind of space, it’s always going to be tough to do it with the big.
the big corporate. And then we as the consultants, we always said, okay, let’s build a venture builder and let’s try to split that a little bit, develop a little speedboat in Berlin, classic. Yeah, this is what we did then. And then stepped into that field and really tried to figure out what is the actual problem. I think we never started with the vision of we want to analyze waste. It was not our original idea.
Our original idea where we started with was always to build a platform, waste trading platform, Classic, everyone wants to build a platform. But quite quickly realized that’s not the real issue. It’s not really the issue to get waste, to source waste. The issue is always to get the good waste, like good quality. So it’s not a quantity issue, it’s rather a quality issue at the end.
Patrick Hypscher: And you already mentioned a bit, there’s a difference sometimes between the headquarter established processes that are also normally built to scale a certain business and to improve efficiency and then something like new ventures. You’ve been familiar with EEW before, then you also joined New Ventures. What was the role and what’s the importance of New Ventures for Wasteer?
Benedict von Spankeren: Essential. I mean in the end it’s… So I was kind of involved in an entire process of also being really one of the first members of New Ventures of course and if you start that kind of new stuff in this kind of context, you also you’re a part of it. It has its benefits and its misfits but…
You’re the classic first born, you just try out and see how it works etc. And that role was super important of course. I think when I started…
I wasn’t even aware that we’re building a company where I’m then I have to lead that kind of company. I wasn’t 100 % aware of that. At some point it was just like, there have been one year down the road, you should spin off the company here and you should go out and then we have our proof that actually New Ventures is working and we can.
build companies and all of that. That was one of the first moments I realized, I have to manage that kind of stuff. yeah, therefore super important, of course, building ventures is a process you have to kind of learn and adapt. And new ventures was very, very important for that direction.
[00:05:57] Where Wasteer Stands Today
Patrick Hypscher: And now, like three years down the road, Wasteer is not so much a startup anymore, already like a scale up. Can you tell us a bit where Wasteer is standing in terms of making to markets?
Benedict von Spankeren: quite well established I would say right now. We have 33 plants all over Europe, so 10 countries covered nowadays. Yeah, and the beauty of that kind of stuff is that…
If you are the first one, you can also define the market. You also define how processes look like, how products look like, etc. So we are in a position where we really can define how the solutions should look like. We are building, so that’s the beauty of it.
But yeah, we’re a growing company. I think it’s not a hyper growth startup case. We never wanted to be that. To be honest, I have no idea how to do that. Having 30 people every month and new team members. No idea. So it’s definitely a journey. We are 18 people nowadays. Yeah, customers, as I said, all over Europe, which also brings its own challenges. But yeah, this is where we are right now.
[00:07:07] Waste Analysis and Steering
Patrick Hypscher: And what are the essentials of the service or the product Wasteer is offering?
Benedict von Spankeren: So Wasteer is two words at the end, waste and steering. that’s kind of what we always try to do.
Patrick Hypscher: Mmm, ahhh.
Benedict von Spankeren: There we go. And when it comes to waste, it’s always about the analysis. So our first job is always to figure out what is inside. It’s a very simple goal, a simple goal in terms of understanding, but that’s also the most tricky part. So I really have to figure out if there are hazardous materials in there, classic contaminants, gas bottles, big parts, metal pieces, what not, because that can cause really problems in operations, I think it’s quite obvious.
there’s a gas bottle exploding in your processes, that’s not optimal I’d say. First thing and most obvious thing and the second part is always to try to get the entire composition. I was like, I’m not just interested in one specific object but I’m interested in how is the composition of every single delivery. I want to know how much plastic is in there, how big is the fossil part or the biogenic part, is there anything which can cause emission relevant problems. All of these aspects
you just get, if you analyze, not just only one object, but every single object. And that’s all the waste analysis part on one hand, and then the steering part is then using that data to make processes more efficient. And that you can do, of course, in the plant itself. So if I see something which is very dangerous, I give you a ping, I send you a notification on Teams, on your phone, we trigger an alarm system so you can react. But we can also use the knowledge to…
or improve plant operations in terms of mixing. So I give you a certain amount of information so that you know exactly what to do next. So not always a warning, but also just a supporting tool. That’s one part. And then you, of course, always try to use the data to go more in this forecasting aspect, meaning if I’m working in the sales team for a plant, I organize waste. If I suddenly know quite specific which customer normally brings,
I can do way better planning because I know exactly, exactly nothing is exact in this industry, but you know way better of what is where, what should be where at what point and what point in time does it make sense to pre-sort this truck before I burn it. All of that information suddenly you have and you can use. So all in all, what we do is always waste analysis on one hand and waste steering using that kind of information on the
[00:09:40] Waste as a Resource
Patrick Hypscher: Okay, and zooming out a bit, how does that contribute to a more circular economy?
Benedict von Spankeren: Simple message again at the end, the better you know the input, the better you can control the output. The input is waste. I consider waste as a resource. So we should definitely take care of how can we get most out of the waste. And normally in recycling industry you always differentiate between thermal recovery, so you get the energy out of material, or material recycling or recovery, so you get the material out of it. Both…
Yeah, are important. Right now we are more on the energy recovery side of things because we are working with energy from waste facilities. But we are also now working with recyclers and recycling industries in Madrid, for example. And our job is always to improve your processes that you get more out of the resource waste. That’s always our job. And I think it’s quite obvious if you really don’t understand what’s coming in, what’s inside your waste.
the chance that you get most out of it is relatively low. It’s just fingers crossed that everything’s going to be fine. That’s how you run it then. And we just try to provide enough information that you really know what’s inside and how to get most of it out there and out of that. And that is our key goal and how we contribute to a more circular economy.
[00:11:07] Waste-to-Energy vs Recycling
Patrick Hypscher: Wonderful. And do you see significant differences between then waste to energy facilities and more like recycling facilities?
Benedict von Spankeren: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s very different
Patrick Hypscher: The process, as you described it on a high level, pretty similar.
Benedict von Spankeren: Yeah, on a high level it is, because you try to get stuff out of waste, mean plant design is very different. If you want to get energy out of waste, you obviously you burn it. So these plants are way, way bigger than recycling facilities, for example. They have huge bunkers stuffed with waste. And then you kind of mix the waste to kind of try to get a very homogeneous mix, let’s so that the fire performance is…
It’s relatively steady because at the end it’s kind of an oven. The oven has a certain temperature and the oven is built for a certain temperature. So you always try to have that perfect temperature because perfect temperature means you burn most efficiently. And that is what we then try to do. You put that kind of waste in the burning process and then you burn waste. Recycling is way more precise. You have way more machinery which is responsible for…
sorting for separating waste that’s very much different. But for us as a business, I think the key point of why we are not doing that so much in the recycling industry is money to be honest. So the margin in energy from waste facilities is way higher than for recycling industry. And that is of course a problem if you have a product which costs a little bit of money.
They have the same problem. they literally have the exact same issue, but they can’t really afford always the same solution like the energy from waste facility. That is of course also linked to the fact that if the energy from waste facility, which earns way more than a recycling facility, is shut down for a day, it costs you easily between 90 to 250k per day. So every object I see and I detect and I warn you and is then being removed before the entire plant is shut down,
covers the cost. That is not the case in recycling industry. So margins are a little bit more sensible and sensitive and you just have to find a good balance what works and what not.
[00:13:34] Cultural Resistance and the 99% Myth
Patrick Hypscher: And now you already laid out a bit the kinds of players, the different complexities. hear physical facilities, but of course there’s an IT aspect involved. You have sales teams and you have suppliers. So what are typical challenges you face when starting to implement Wasteer?
Benedict von Spankeren: You always have cultural challenges of course. It is an old industry dominated by the classic old white men. That’s the status. Sometimes it’s tricky to come around with a new technology everyone wished for ages to have and suddenly you have it and then people have to change their processes which is not always easy.
And again, also we are a company who is suddenly coming as kind of an outsider, not anymore, but at the beginning to come in and tell you what you could do better, which is tricky. Of course, I totally get it. And so the cultural aspect is tricky because at the end, effects or our technology just gives you an effect if you act on it.
I can do a perfect analysis, I see every contaminant, I calculate the perfect calorific value, but if you don’t do anything with it, well, nothing will happen. So it is extremely important that our users are actually using the product and change their processes based on it. I think that is one of our key challenges that you have to convince, not just the management, because the management for them is obvious. They look at numbers and say, yeah, of course we’re going to do that.
But the crane operator was like, man, I did that for 30 years now. I’m not going to change. That’s the one you have to convince. And that’s the one they have to see the benefit. And that is definitely a challenge. And you can get there with really having talks, like really involving them also in the early processes of, hey, this is our plan. This is what we want to do. By the way, we do a test. I throw in a gas bottle. Now you see alarm here. So now you can do something. So really involve them. Make them part of the product. That’s always.
one way of approaching it. That’s one challenge. The other one, which is a little bit kind of connected to that, more in the management area, is expectation of AI. So when we started, everyone was like, it’s not going to be possible. Did you see my waste? You will never see a laughing gas bottle. Like, there’s no way. Suddenly, we are able to do that, and people are getting comfortable with what AI can do. And suddenly,
expectations are rising. So if someone comes in and says I built a model which is able to detect with a precision of 99 % gas bottles, I would just say that’s completely bullshit. Because that is literally not possible if you look at the waste stream we are dealing with. Everything is dirty, is demolished, it’s partially covered. There is nothing like 99 % accuracy that is not existing.
The waste stream is just way too messy. You’re not burning coal. No, that’s really not the case.
Patrick Hypscher: And you probably also need to set up the camera to make the images as a basis.
Benedict von Spankeren: Just imagine there’s a truck, 24 tons stuffed in that truck, unloading in one go. It’s tricky, yeah? It’s not just conveyor belt where everything is flattened out and you can see exactly what’s in there. That’s just not the case. So that’s of course a challenge and this challenge will stay there because the waste stream is not changing. And if then someone comes in and says, okay, can you guys detect mercury? Like, no, we can’t. Mercury, you have to imagine…
this amount of mercury in a small bottle or whatsoever, you will never see that. There is no way. And then people say, well, if you can’t do that, then I don’t work with you. And that’s a challenge. We’re going from, are you able to detect car tires, to are you able to detect mercury? And that’s what you’re dealing with. It’s fine. It’s part of it. But expectation management is part of a challenge, let’s say. Nowadays, it’s getting more and more, let’s say.
[00:17:40] Transparency Down the Value Chain
Patrick Hypscher: I wonder about the suppliers. They’re actually also affected by the work you’re doing. How does it change their work?
Benedict von Spankeren: So also it’s not always the case that the supplier is doing that kind of stuff on purpose like they don’t smuggle always laughing gas bottles in there because they are just too lazy to remove them. That’s also not their purpose. The moment the energy from waste facility or our customer sees the contaminant and gives them the power to have more transparency, you also get in contact with their suppliers saying hey guys we’re watching this is what you bring please
take care of that, remove that from your waste stream, otherwise we have to charge you. And suddenly we have, nowadays, I think three new customers who are approaching us because of one of our customers charged them, say guys, there’s too many contaminants at yours. And they were like, man, we also don’t know where they’re coming from. We also want to know. So you slowly move down the value chain and try also to optimize their process as well. So partially it’s good feedback, but…
partially, of course, not everyone is interested in more transparency. That is the market where the classic rule is waste always finds the cheapest way. the cheapest way is not always the correct one. And that, of course, happens. And as soon as you put a lot of transparency in there, not everyone is happy about that, of course. luckily, no one…
directly approached us and said, guys, you have to stop. That’s fine. It’s not really our customer base right now. These kind of guys. But it is tricky sometimes.
[00:19:26] Pricing, Gate Fees, and CO2 Taxation
Patrick Hypscher: If we unpack that a bit for the people who are not so familiar with waste and waste to energy, so the transparency we’re talking about is on the one hand driven by dangerous goods, as you mentioned some of them, but it’s probably also about what kind of waste is it because that kind of defines the costs and so to say the revenue. Can you give us a bit more insights how the awareness and transparency about the
kind of waste influences, let’s say, the commercial position of your customers and in what way waste helps and makes a difference.
Benedict von Spankeren: So in general, think you have to understand that in the European Union, you have waste classes. So the residual waste, for example, is one waste class. And there are a lot of different classes. And they are all the same in Europe. So first of all, it’s a very good thing. So you know exactly how this kind of waste goes there. This kind of waste goes there. But within these waste classes, there are certain uncertainties. They’re a little bit more roughly defined.
Yeah, it’s not everything super specific. And therefore you define prices per class most of the time. Of course it’s individual negotiations and all of that. But at the end, the waste class is the factor. Waste class and calorific value, that’s the main important factor when it comes to a price. Calorific value is super important because that is the key value of…
how you operate and how you burn your waste is just very important factor. And suddenly with normally if you come over and say I have 20 tons of waste I would like to bring that to you then I ask what kind of waste is that and you give me a calorific value and then we say okay let’s make a deal. These are kind of the gate fees. But what you bring at the ends I really don’t have a really
Patrick Hypscher: And these are then the gate fees.
Benedict von Spankeren: I don’t have it under control. I can’t really monitor it right now if you don’t have our technology. you just, I’m just trusting that you’re bringing what you promised. With 20 tons it’s easy, I can monitor that. But if you bring, I don’t know, 10,000 tons, that’s really, really hard to monitor that and to track it down.
And what our customers are now suddenly doing is, okay, I have suddenly all of that information so I can set up dynamic pricing systems. So you’re not just paying per ton, but you’re also paying per calorific value, for example. So pricing is suddenly dynamic. Yeah, depends on what you actually bring. If you bring the perfect calorific value, you pay less. And if you bring constantly too much, you pay more. And that is how you suddenly can change metrics in the market. There’s one part.
And another part which becomes more and more relevant in the EU is CO2 taxation. So energy from waste is part of the ETS format, meaning I have to pay taxes for every emitted ton. But the plant of course says, man, this is not my fault. I’m not bringing in the plastic. I’m here to remove waste. So I’m of course handing over the cost to the one who actually brings the plastic. That’s their thinking.
And in the UK, for example, they measure literally the CO2 at the chimney. So they’re measuring what goes out, and then the plant has to allocate these costs to their customers. Good luck with that. Exactly. That is literally impossible if you’re not working with us. No, and that’s the reason why they are extremely interested to have way better idea of who brings what.
Otherwise it’s not possible because everyone would say no. It wasn’t me, I did pre-sorting, there was no plastic in my waste. Please prove that it was me, I have to pay more. It’s different in Germany, so different regulations in different countries, but all in all you now have to pay CO2 taxation and if you don’t want to pay it yourself you have to allocate it to a customer and then you also have to prove who brought what. And that’s becoming tricky.
Patrick Hypscher: You do have to prove. Otherwise you just do it based on the contracts you made, which still might be different than the real emissions. There’s probably then a… And I don’t know how to allocate that.
Benedict von Spankeren: That’s the key point. If the state is saying you pay CO2 taxes per waste code, which is a very standard value, then it’s fine. You can easily do that because there’s a contract with the waste code and then you hand over costs. But if the state is forcing you to measure actual emissions on the chimney, then it’s very much different what the contract says and what is going out there because contract and reality are two different things.
Patrick Hypscher: So zooming out a bit, actually it’s again about the Wasteer helps to make the waste flow transparent and this then helps me as a plant operator to steer my plant more efficiently and allocate costs and benefits in a better way.
Benedict von Spankeren: A lot of different levels, yeah, all in all,
[00:24:35] Calculating the ROI
Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, okay.
And this is already kind of working in practice because then if upstream suppliers already approach you and they feel the change and the commercial incentivation, that’s kind of the proof. Nice. mean, if we zoom out towards the end a bit and…
stick to the topic of transparency. So many people who are listening are not so much into waste, but they also deal with the question of how to make resource flow more transparent. Right now many people talk about digital product passport. There’s of course the discussion about digital twins and everyone wants to have more data. But…
On the other hand, gathering that data costs money and you have to invest in hardware, you have to invest in software, you might even have to invest in bringing the people on board to adopt a change. And then you ask yourself, okay, what’s the benefit of that?
We’re not here to solve problems of the digital product passport, but how are your customers approaching this question of comparing the costs of increasing transparency with the benefits of this transparency?
Benedict von Spankeren: Yeah, different levels. Of course, you always have to do an ROI calculation at the end because you have to justify costs. Quite a normal process. But I think one of the most obvious ones is the shutdowns. So as soon as your plant is really shut down, you lose money, a lot of money. And then it’s just a matter of calculating how often that happens and what is it causing, like because of what?
And if you just have two shutdowns per year, it’s already worth to go for our software that’s already done, done deal. And all of that other stuff comes on top. But yeah, sometimes I think for everyone it’s kind of obvious, the benefit is kind of obvious, but then figuring out the numbers behind that is sometimes a challenge for these plans because they normally don’t really track that information. So what we always ask them to do is we have, I don’t know.
relatively straightforward Excel file where you put in numbers. How often did that happen? How often did that happen? How many shutdowns did you have? How many fuel oil you had to use? All of these aspects you can put together, collect in your facility and then we calculate the ROI. And then that’s always the good thing is that I always try to not calculate it for you because as soon as you calculate it for yourself you immediately are aware of why you are doing that.
And that is a way better buy-in than if I’m selling you that. But yeah, that’s a very normal process. It’s like everyone who does that, like no one did do the calculations and said, no, that’s not worth it. That’s normally not the case. If you have a plant where everything runs smoothly, everything is pretreated, there are no contaminants and their calorific values, always stable. I was like, I’m then…
Guys, I think it’s not worth it. Just don’t do it. You don’t need it. If you don’t have problems, then don’t. But as soon as you visit the plant, you have chats with the plant operations. They’re also burning waste, of course, and that comes with problems. yeah, might be not so high, the ROI. But at the end, the most straightforward thing is contaminant cost. If you have to shut down your plant, that is costing a lot of money, and then you easily cover the cost of the software.
Patrick Hypscher: Unless you sign up.
Benedict von Spankeren: Exactly.
Patrick Hypscher: Bene, thanks a lot for sharing your experience.
Benedict von Spankeren: Thanks.
[00:28:35] Outro
Patrick Hypscher: This was the third episode in the series Incineration in the Circular Economy. You find the key learnings from this conversation and upcoming circular economy industry events in our newsletter. Just sign up for that at www.circularity.fm. In the fourth episode of this series we explore carbon capture as an instrument to reduce emissions from waste incineration.
Until then, let’s drive a profitable circular economy. And please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.
My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.