Maria José Gonzalez is the project coordinator of Biovalor ‘Generating Value with Agroindustrial Waste’ implemented by the Ministries of Industry (MIEM), Environment (MVOTMA) and Agriculture (MGAP) in Uruguay. Biovalor aims at deepening the concept of Circular Economy and its applications for the Uruguayan economy. She was Executive Director of Cempre Uruguay and has extensive experience in environmental consultancy for industries, companies and public agencies, as well as counselling and teaching in the area of cleaner production and solid waste. María José is an Environmental Civil Engineer finishing a Masters in Environmental Engineering from the University of the Republic UdelaR.

Hi Maria, it’s a pleasure to have you here for a conversation. Let me start from the project you coordinate in Uruguay, Proyecto Biovalor. How did you get there and how was the project born?

I am an environmental engineer. Before joining Biovalor, I worked for a long time in waste management in both advocacy roles for waste recycling in an NGO, and in consultancy roles for local, national and international institutions. I also took part in the first national plan on waste management. 

Biovalor is a project born from the government, who presented this idea to the Global Environmental Fund (GEF) through UNIDO. One of the most interesting aspects is that it’s a transversal project with three ministries involved: (i) Environment, (ii) Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries, and (iii) Industry and Energy. It’s a project with different interests on the table, thinking together on how to add value to agro-industrial waste.

We have a very nice team with different capabilities. Florencia is an agricultural engineer, Victor a chemical engineer, Ester is an economist and Mariana is our assistant, working on administration, communication and events. We also closely work with a lot of external consultants. For instance we have someone paid by the project but working at the National Environmental Direction, who has helped us with geographic information for mapping all the different activities and information. 

How did the government come to propose such a project?

Back in 2013, the original name of the project was ‘Uruguay towards a Green Economy’. We didn’t know exactly what we were looking for, but we knew we needed to start. Uruguay had to go through a big energy transformation, and we now have 98% of energy in the electric grid being renewable - a lot of wind and solar energy, hydraulic energy and biomass. 

The Ministry of Industry and Energy—which was promoting this transformation—proposed this project in order to add value to waste. We knew that agro-industrial waste to energy is not sustainable, so the Ministry of Agriculture tried to open our minds and think about other ways to add value. I think it was a great action by the national government. 

Why the focus on agro-industrial waste? 

The Uruguayan economy is very agro-industrial, we export large volumes of meat and milk, and we don’t have a lot of industry. We are primary-sector intensive, which is a sector that extracts a lot of natural resources by definition. 

The project was initially focused on three technologies: anaerobic digestion, compost and nutrients recovery, and alternative combustion to transform waste into energy. Later on—thinking that these technologies might not have been good or feasible for different types of producers—they open a fourth focus area for any other by-product. This has brought a lot of benefits to the project, opening an avenue for the exploration of other alternatives.

If you look at the Butterfly Diagram from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, we started with the least value-adding loops with traditional technology and we are now moving towards closed loops where we can add more value. Through the project, for instance, we have been promoting anaerobic digestion in a dairy farm. We are aware that this is not fully economically feasible and it’s not the panacea, but it’s better than landfill.  In terms of long-term sustainability, however, these technologies are not enough.

For those who might not be aware of it, what is anaerobic digestion?

It’s a biological treatment of any organic matter in anaerobic condition, that is without the presence of oxygen. You have micro-organisms that eat the organic matter and—in the process of degrading the organic matter—they emit methane, bio-gas, C02 and other gases. Through this process, they stabilise the organic matter, making it possible to be later applied to the soil. For compost, it’s the same process, but you need oxygen and there are other kinds of organisms that eat the organic matter. In one case you generate energy, while in the other you don’t. In both cases, however, you stabilise the organic matter.

Thanks for the explanation, that’s very clear. You are an environmental engineer with previous experience on waste management - when did you start engaging with the circular economy concept?

I first discovered the circular economy concept in the conference Rio+20 in 2012. Back then, I thought it was recycling with a different name. But when I joined Biovalor, I started applying a circular economy approach to traditional technologies, and I could see its real potential. If we continue like this, I am sure that any of these projects can be replicable and can be scaled to different sectors.

This new paradigm can help us to produce efficiently with respect for nature. In our country, we have people who only care about production without caring about nature, and people that think that only nature is important and we shouldn't produce. Neither of these positions is good. We need to create employment, produce for our country, but need to find a way to have both aspects considered. And the circular economy is a way to do so.

Starting from this, have you taken actions to promote the circular economy concept in Uruguay and South America?

In this advocacy perspective, we organised the first large-scale Circular Economy Forum—Foro de Economia Circular—in South America in 2017. If we want to talk about the circular economy, we need to understand what is the circular economy.  We need to show to politicians, civil society, and technical people working in governments and private companies what the circular economy is and what’s happening in this area around the world.

That’s why for the first edition in 2017, we invited people like Alexandre Lemille, Ken Webster and Andrea Nicolaj. We needed to bring people in to show what’s happening in the world and that we have to redesign our system, companies, and products to really achieve a circular economy.  It was a great opportunity to involve a lot of people from the government, who now say ‘I like this way of thinking and that’s possible for Uruguay’.

Going more into the daily operations of BioValor, you have been working on different projects. Can you provide us an overview of your activities?

We work in 4 lines.

The first one is generating information. When we started, we didn’t have information about where was the waste and what was its characterisation - e.g. its nitrogen phosphates and caloric power.  But if we need to detect opportunities, we need to know this. So—as a first pillar of the project—we started to work together with private sector and universities to create this type of information.

It’s important to do this kind of work while being in direct contact with the representative organisations of different sectors. You can’t make this from a computer, without talking with the actors on the ground and understanding their problematics. We are still working on it and—being a public project—transparency and public information are very important for us. The information has to be on the website and we make efforts to communicate it. 

The second line is to change public policies. To do that, of course we need to understand our current policies and how they act as a barrier towards the promotion of this kind of technologies. If we find the barriers, we can set in place more favourable policy conditions. The third component is to finance pilot projects, and there are many reasons for doing this. One is to demonstrate that the technology actually works, while another is to help producers to share the risk for investing in new technologies. We are currently working with an organisation that helps startups to collaborate with producers.

At the beginning, it was about financing 4-5 pilot project, understanding barriers, de-risking investments and learning how to change the reality. In the end, we financed 8 projects with different technologies, involving different sectors and that helped us a lot to understand what are the challenges around this kind of technology. 

What about the fourth line of activities?

The fourth is— of course—to generate capacity. Part of that was writing in the original project outline that we would have the flexibility to change as we learn along the way. We started with 4 technologies, but now we can use part of the budget to promote new technologies and make an alliance with national organisations to promote the concept of circular economy. Not anymore green economy or waste valorisation, but circular economy.

We have internationally financed projects and we are continuously applying for new funding. In this way, we can ensure additional resources alongside the already existing government engagement. Currently we have two nationally financed projects, and one is called Programa Oportunidades Circulares. It is a project in collaboration with the National Development Agency (ANDE), which provides financial resources from the government to help startups with circular economy projects. 

During World Environment Day, on the 5th June 2019, we gave the first Circular Economy Award, in partnership with the Green Economy Alliance.

That sounds great. Would you like to share any of the organisations receiving the award for their work on circular economy?

Absolutely. We assigned the award to 5 organisations working for a long time on circular economy projects in Uruguay.

The first one, called Lanas Trinidad, is probably not the most circular of all, but we wanted to recognise its long-lasting impact in Uruguay. It’s a company that makes wool scouring (i.e. washing) and they have an interesting view because they have an anaerobic digestion system, they return nutrients to the soil and have a by-product from the washing of the wool. Sometimes the major income comes from by-products and not from the wool itself. 

Another winner was Repapel, a NGO promoting for a long time paper recycling. They take papers from the schools and private companies, and transform it into tissues, books, notebooks and give it back to the schools, taking care of all the logistics. 

The third one is a company creating value from tetra pak, URUPLAC. It might not be the best way, but for a long time in Uruguay there has been no alternative for this material other than landfill. Now at least there is one opportunity to add value through this company, and this changed part of our national reality.

The fourth one is a cooperative making products with noble materials, such as paper and cotton. They understand that if they want to compete with traditional, plastics bags, they have to make a very good design of their product so that people see the value and are willing to pay a difference in price. There are 8 women working in vulnerability conditions in this cooperative, which is called NIDO.

And the last one is related to the program Plan Ceibal - One Laptop per child. Have you heard about it? 

Nope, what’s about?

Uruguay was a pioneer in giving all kids in public schools a laptop for free, to help them have access to technologies and digital opportunities. Part of the learning programme is done with the laptop. This was an amazing governmental project. After the use of the laptop, however, there is a huge problem about what to do with the laptops. 

To solve that, they made a smaller program within the bigger program, called Ceibal Prendetec,  only to add value to the laptops after their use. They are dismantling different parts, commercialising what they can and making wood with the plastics. They are currently looking into different alternatives. 

When it comes to creating value from agro-industrial waste, what projects are you working on at Biovalor?

I will share two cases of pilot projects. 

One is focused on bio-gas, with anaerobic digestion in a dairy farm. Pablo Perez is the responsible person, and it’s a very nice, uncommon and modern project for Uruguay. This project  is called Rincón de Albano.

In Uruguay, the cows graze in open fields and spend most of their time in the open air. They only go to an indoor platform when they eat and when the milk is taken. In that space, there is a lot of waste generated. This space is only used twice a day—at noon and at night—because for the rest of the day the cows are on the grass, so the waste returns to the grass with nutrients and organic matter. The problem was when they go for the extraction of milk.

In the European model, you have most of the times cows all concentrated in a closed space, not eating in the grass. Our model is Uruguay is a very good way to produce, but when it comes to biogas, you have less waste to add value to. The same amount of cows might be good in Germany but not in Uruguay, because the time where you collect the manure is only part of the day.

What is the collection of manure important for?

Once you collect the manure, you wash it with water, it goes through a system that separates the water from the solid, and the water goes to a bio-digester. It’s not a European bio-digester, it’s more Latin American. It’s a covered lagoon, there are a lot in Brazil too, and it’s a cheaper technology than, say, a German bio-digester. The water stays for 40 days in the lagoon and during this project it generate biogas. The biogas is extracted and there is a lot of methane which we can use for energy. There is a motor generator, collected to the grid, which injects energy into the grid. This creates a closed loop on the farm. 

Is this energy generated recognised by the authorities for usage in the public grid?

If you generate less than 150 Kw, the public energy provider company gives you the possibility to connect it to the grid and recognises it at the same price that you pay for the energy. It’s really interesting, as you can have a lot of savings.

You can’t inject in the grid more than you consume, the balance of energy has to be 0. But differently from wind or solar, with biogas you can decide when to inject it in the grid; you can manage the energy. This means that you can inject it in the grid in the moment when it’s more expensive and consume it when it’s less expensive. In this way the balance is 0, but economically you have a difference. You are going to have a little bit of input on the energy generated.

What was part of the discovery journey of this project, was that more than the energy generation, the bio-gas is good because it helps you for nutrients circularity. In an agro-industrial country like Uruguay, we understand we need to work in nutrients circularity. After 30 days, you can return the water to the soil, injecting nitrogen phosphorus and organic matter in a controlled way.

What are the benefits of nutrients circularity? 

By returning these nutrients to the soil, you can use less synthetic fertiliser. We don’t know yet how much less, it’s not yet a substitute to all synthetic fertilisers or pesticides, but you can use less of them and have some cost savings. It also gives more strength to the grass.

We need to study more about the actual numbers. We are currently supporting an investigation program on the concept of circular nutrients so that we can advice to producers not to apply so much nitrogen, because with nutrients circularity you already have enough nitrogen in your soil for the plants. We're putting more investigation to be sure what are the real benefits of managing your waste in this way.

And what about the second pilot project at BioValor? 

The second project is called Ontilcor, it’s totally different and some people might say it’s not circular. But I am going to tell you anyway because it’s realistic. Here in Uruguay we have a lot of slaughterhouses and we are producers of high-quality meat, exported in all the world. When you work in a slaughterhouse you have a problem with ruminal content, that is what’s inside the stomach of the cows. 

If you look at it, it’s a little bit of grass, and you can use it to make compost in very good conditions, but the volumes are very big. Slaughterhouses need to consume a lot of energy for steam, and through this project we are working to use the ruminal content for burning in the boiler. In this way, we replace the use of wood by using a waste stream.

In order for the ruminal content to go into the boiler, they needed to create a new design for the boiler—a new system for filling it—because it works very differently if it’s wood than if it’s grass. The designer of the boiler is a national company and they are learning by doing. It could be a really interesting solution for some of the slaughterhouses. It might not be the most circular of projects, but for our reality—Latin American reality—it’s a good opportunity to explore. 

Indeed, it sounds like a very interesting project for the Uruguayan economic context. In these conversion processes, using ruminal content or manure as feedstocks, how does efficiency look like?

It depends on what you are measuring, energy efficiency or nutrients efficiency. Often, we don’t achieve the energy balance in the projects, but in the slaughterhouse project the balance of energy is good. For a long time the problem for people trying to do this has been that in order to use the ruminal content you had to remove a lot of water and there was a lot of energy involved in doing that. From an energy point of view, it didn’t make any sense.

With this new system and design, however, you fill the boiler from the top, so when the ruminal content goes down, the heat of the boiler starts to dry part of the ruminal content. You have to remove the water but not as much as before. That’s why the new design has come about. Then energy balance is good now - you earn more than you spend.

What about the scalability of these projects? Is it something you see as a challenge?

Of course, one of the problems is scalability. Not all companies can be in the conversation with this type of technologies. We are currently making a ‘circular trip’, where we put a bus public for everyone that wants to visit the pilot project, in order to show the technology and scale it to other cases.  For example, last week people from another slaughterhouse went to this one to understand what they are doing and how it works. Scalability is still a challenge that we are trying to tackle working with both private and public actors. 

Is the biogas project scalable?

When it comes to the biogas case in the dairy farm, I don’t think we are going to have a lot of them in Uruguay, because our producers are typically small ones, with around 100 cows. This one has 500 cows, so it’s big for the Uruguayan context. Maybe with 100 cows the numbers are not so nice and it’s not replicable, but the concept of nutrients circularity remains the same: you can do the same process without capturing the biogas. You can collect the manure, let it stay in a lagoon for 30-40 days, and then apply it to the soil, returning nutrients and organic matter. The concept stays the same, but you do not take value from the energy generation.

For us, it’s important to have a pool of opportunities and be able to say ‘ok, maybe this is not for you, but this one is good for your scale’.  What was interesting is that we found out that anaerobic digestion is not a way to generate energy, it’s a way to circulate the nutrients. You can have the energy, but it’s a plus, it’s not the core technology.

One of the four pillars of BioValor is public policy advocacy. Any concrete action you are leading in this domain?

In Uruguay, synthetic fertilisers do not pay value-added tax (VAT), while organic fertilisers do. This is not by design, but goes back to historical circumstances when organic fertilisers were not an option on the table and nobody cared about them. Today we are working with the Ministry of Economy and Finance on the implementation of an amendment to apply no-VAT also to organic fertilisers. Now it’s still a barrier because for producers there is a difference in price for using organic ones. You need to have at least the same rules and conditions, and this is one barrier we are trying to remove. We need government engagement on this. In the last 10 years our economy has been growing considerably, but now it’s stuck, so it’s not a good time to advocate for tax cuts.

A very good instrument to promote clean technology that showed the government’s commitment is the Investment Promotion Law. If you invest in green energy, then you have tax exemptions for several years depending on the specific project. That’s to promote investments in some preferred areas, to foster employment generation across the country and invest in clean technologies. 

It started a bit slow for us, but it’s moving. That’s something about Uruguay: we need to think a lot before being able to change our reality. Our colleagues from Chile, Argentina and Brazil are more executive in the changes. But we have very good and stable public institutions, which are respected internationally and that’s good also for investments from other countries. 

Coming to the cultural component, one of your roles is to raise awareness around the feasibility and benefits of circular economy practices. How is the cultural context in Uruguay in this respect?

We still have big barriers, as everywhere in the world. People commit to it when there is money in the middle. For example, last year a law to ban plastic bags was promoted. Now supermarkets can only give biodegradable bags and you have to pay for it. In the first 4 months of implementation, 80% of the population brought their own bad. They never expected these numbers. This shows that if you have to pay for something, you become disciplined.

On another level, household recycling is very low in Uruguay, less than 1% of materials are recycled. We don’t have the infrastructure needed and it’s a volunteer-based system. People can choose to bring their waste, but there are challenges in terms of infrastructure and public awareness. People don’t do it just because they are moved from environmental motivations. The green circle might, but not everyone.

I think the local and national governments have to provide more instruments for people to do it. When I started working on this topic, I was more naive and thought everything was going to work. Now that I am older I think that if you don’t put financial incentives for people—whether it’s Chile, Germany or Finland—it won’t work.

If you look at education, we see that kids are more conscious than adults. And we see the youth movements around the world advocating for change. But we need to put this concept much more embedded into schools. At Biovalor, we have been working with the public, private and financial sectors. As last step, we need to work on an academic level to generate projects and systems to put the circular economy concept more at the core of university, high-school, and technical education. We have a big challenge that we need to act upon.

What’s great to see about BioValor is that it aims at proving and learning by doing. Proving that a different way is possible and learning how to create the most value in the process. Any last thought you’d like to share?

I think it’s important to see that in Latin America we are still one step back from Europe, and this is a good thing. Here we still repair our stuff and put value into people repairing your shoes and dresses. This is part of the circular economy.  For developing countries—I think in Africa and some countries in Asia must be similar—we need to recognise this as an opportunity to create employment and extend the life of products. And for that, of course, we need a better design of products.  When it comes to electronics, for instance, we don’t have production here, it’s only import. If you can repair them, you can have a big impact. 

Repairing your stuff is cool and you can create new jobs for the unemployed. We need to generate capacity, and a first step we are doing is a diagnosis of the different companies that are repairing stuff to understand their barriers and possibilities. To change the reality we first need to study this kind of activities, because nobody has cared about them until now. Understanding the current situation and generating information we can create the inputs to increase the value of these activities.  This is one thing for Uruguay and South America compared to Europe. Maybe, in this case, to be one step behind is better.

May 2020

A conversation between Maria José Gonzalez & Emanuele Di Francesco

Useful links:

• Proyecto BioValor

• Oportunidades Circulares

• Foro de Economia Circular

• Global Environmental Fund

• Plan Ceibal

• PAGE

• Alexandre Lemille at Foro De Economia Circular 2017

• Ken Webster at Foro De Economia Circular 2017