The word "waste" comes from the Latin word "vastus" meaning vast, void or a desert.

At the height of its power, the Latin Roman Empire reached into Algeria, Syria, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt and Libya. The empire's north African boundary was the Atlas Mountains. Below this lay the vast inhospitable expanse of the Sahara Desert. Empty of water and filled with sand and a savage climate the Sahara was a place of utter despair which offered little reward or value to the Romans.

Two thousand years later, we now know this vastus (the Sahara) holds vast energy potentials. It has oil, gas, iron ore, manganese, copper and phosphate. And it's inhospitable desert heat and winds offers an immense source of alternative energy. Furthermore geologists and space shuttle radar have shown that millions of years ago huge rivers flowed through the Sahara onto the Mediterranean. Even now underneath the desert sands lie vast underground aquifers.

This is typical of the story of waste. It is often paradoxical. Its history is topsy turvy, constantly changing and challenging. At one moment in time something is waste. Then at another moment it is valued. One man's waste is another man's treasure.

What waste is constantly changes and grows. What remains constant about waste is that it is problematic and that someone, at some time, is going to try to benefit from using it or trying to get rid of it.