ARTICLE: The asset that the Brazilian market still hasn't learned to price correctly

There is an asset class that the Brazilian market has not yet learned to price correctly, which is not a new technology, a critical mineral, and does not depend on a scientific discovery or future regulation to exist. This asset is produced every day, in increasing volumes, by every city, every industry, and every consumer in the country. We are talking about waste.

Brazil generates approximately 80 million tons of municipal solid waste per year. Historically, we have treated this volume as a sanitary, environmental, and financial problem—something that needed to be removed from cities efficiently and safely. But this view is rapidly becoming obsolete.

Because what we call waste contains energy, capturable carbon, recyclable materials, renewable molecules, and environmental attributes that are increasingly valuable in a decarbonization-driven economy.

The question that investors, regulators, and policymakers should be asking is not how much waste Brazil produces. It is how much value Brazil is still failing to capture through proper management and modern waste treatment infrastructure.

During the 20th century, wealth was associated with the ability to extract resources from nature. Oil, minerals, and fossil fuels shaped economies, defined geopolitics, and determined the competitiveness of entire countries. The 21st century is beginning to operate under a different logic.

As the world seeks to reduce emissions, strengthen energy security, and lessen the pressure on natural resources, a new capability is gaining economic relevance: recovering what has already been extracted.

The 20th century was built on the ability to extract resources from nature. The 21st century will be built on the ability to restore them. And this change is happening before our very eyes.

The European Union is moving forward with the implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which incorporates emissions into the logic of international competitiveness by requiring exporters to report and progressively internalize the cost of carbon embedded in products such as steel, aluminum, cement, and fertilizers. Regulated carbon markets are gaining scale.

Renewable fuels are occupying an increasing space in energy matrices. Large companies are making decarbonization commitments that require traceability, circularity, and effective emission reductions.

All these movements increase the demand for the same thing: secondary raw materials. Or, in other words, waste transformed into value.

The phenomenon can already be observed in concrete regulatory decisions. In Europe, the CBAM (Brazilian Carbon Monitoring Committee) transforms environmental attributes into factors of industrial and commercial competitiveness – with real financial obligations for those who cannot prove the carbon footprint of their products.

Renewable origin

In Brazil, the Future Fuel Law, enacted in October 2024 and regulated by the ANP in February 2026, established the Biomethane Origin Guarantee Certificate (CGOB) — an instrument that certifies the renewable origin of biomethane with verified and registered traceability.

With it, biogas capture and biomethane production cease to be merely environmental attributes and begin to generate a traceable, tradable, and regulated economic asset. For the first time, a renewable molecule originating from waste carries not only energy value but also regulatory value.

Methane capture, material recovery, and environmental traceability cease to be merely externalities. They begin to generate revenue, reduce regulatory costs, and create competitive advantages for companies and entire sectors. It is at this point that the debate shifts from environmental to economic.

The most common mistake is to imagine that the waste sector belongs to the same category as it did twenty years ago. Perhaps the main misconception lies not in pricing, but in classification.

The market continues to treat waste companies as waste companies. But that definition is rapidly becoming outdated. An organization capable of capturing methane, producing biomethane, generating renewable energy, recovering materials for industry, trading environmental attributes, and avoiding carbon emissions doesn't just operate in waste management. It operates energy, climate, and circular economy infrastructure.

The difference seems semantic. It isn't. Markets don't just value what a company does today. They price what they believe it will be able to generate tomorrow. And there's another aspect that's often ignored. This infrastructure has extraordinary barriers to entry—and they begin even before the first ton is processed. A solar power plant can be financed and built in a few years; a factory can be replicated relatively quickly; but a network of eco-parks cannot.

It requires decades of development, environmental licensing, specialized engineering, complex logistics, operational scale, and institutional relationships. These are assets built over time and do not arise simply because capital is available. This is where the narrative needs to be read accurately: the value is not in the raw waste. It is in the transformation system.

Oil in the subsoil also has potential value, but it does not generate wealth without refineries, pipelines, terminals, and intensive capital. Similarly, waste does not spontaneously transform into energy, renewable fuel, environmental credits, or industrial raw materials.

Management guarantee

The economic value lies in the conversion capacity. The gate fee does not compensate for the waste itself. It compensates for the capacity to guarantee its environmentally sound management and disposal through a complex infrastructure built over decades.

The economic advantage stems from another decision: the business capacity to transform this inevitable flow into energy, renewable fuel, and environmental benefits. This requires a long-term vision, risk management, and the ability to structure robust and financially viable projects. This is what makes this infrastructure so difficult to replicate—and so strategic.

The logic is similar to that of renewable energies. Wind and sun are abundant and free. What has economic value is the infrastructure capable of converting them into reliable energy available to the market.

The same is true for waste. The resource is abundant. The transformation is complex. And that's precisely why it's valuable. Therefore, the infrastructure of the circular economy is perhaps one of the scarcest—and least understood—aspects of the new green economy.

The numbers help illustrate this transformation. By 2025, just one of the largest Brazilian platforms in the sector processed nearly 9 million tons of waste, produced around 500,000 MWh of renewable energy, captured more than 59,000 Nm³ per hour of biogas, and avoided more than 3 million tons of CO2 equivalent.

These indicators do not describe an environmental liability, but a productive platform. They describe assets capable of generating energy, renewable fuel, environmental credits, and raw materials for new industrial chains.

The transformation of the 21st century

Oil transformed the 20th century because it allowed geology to be converted into energy. Waste can help transform the 21st century because it allows an urban and environmental challenge to be converted into new sources of productivity, efficiency, and energy security.

The difference is that we're not talking about a finite reserve. We're talking about a permanent flow, renewed daily by cities, industries, and consumers.

Unlike many natural resources, this is a highly predictable flow, not very subject to cycles of scarcity and directly associated with urban and economic growth.

Brazil possesses unique conditions to lead this movement. It has one of the cleanest energy matrices in the world, enormous potential for biogas and biomethane production, ample availability of organic waste, and a growing need to modernize urban environmental management. This is not just an environmental agenda.

It's about industrial policy, competitiveness, energy security. And it may be one of the greatest economic opportunities that is still undervalued in the country.

Brazil is discussing green hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuel, and the new low-carbon economy. All are relevant topics. But perhaps one of the most strategic infrastructures in this transformation is hidden in plain sight.

For centuries, civilizations have become wealthy by extracting resources from nature. The next one will become wealthy by recovering resources that have already been extracted.

Brazil already possesses this raw material. We produce millions of tons of it every day. Waste has been treated as a liability for decades. The 21st century is beginning to reveal that it can be one of the strategic assets for the energy transition, climate security, and industrial competitiveness.

* Marília Garcez , director of circular economy, communication and sustainability at Orizon