Abstract

This article is designed to integrate the results of the studies undertaken on different frontiers by a group of researchers to address both socio-economic problems and environmental problems with a special reference to sustainable development. It also offers appropriate solutions to make sure the best use of available resources and assigns economic value to different wastes via resource recovery through material sorting, recycling and reprocessing, production of food, heat and electricity. The focus remains on techno-economic disposal of different wastes in a way to adapt them as alternative resources instead of treating them as wastes. The article concludes that the techno-economic disposal of wastes can effectively address the problems of energy and food shortage because it is based on the hypothesis that the total amount of resources in the universe remains constant although they may change from one form to another. This hypothesis provides a firm basis for sustainable development; the concept being contemporarily explored as a cure for socio-economic ills that destabilize the shaky economies. The study supports the view that a waste is no more a waste as every waste can be assigned an economic value. The integrated results of studies conducted in the context of sustainable development strongly recommend the interlinking of economic problems with environmental problems.