In the 21st century, it seems waste will be the new food.
Once the sole purview of the profession of civil engineering, infrastructure- which includes the management of water, waste, food, transport, and energy- is taking on extreme relevance for landscape planning and design practices in the context of changing, decentralizing structures of urban-regional economies. Food production and energy networks can no longer be engineered without considering the cascade of waste streams in the cycling of raw material inputs…Put simply, the urban-regional landscape should be conceived as infrastructure.
All forms of waste are eventually consumed, used, and recycled in a chain of matter and energy flow. But humans have persistently mismanaged their waste, creating new types at an increasing pace and in excessive quantities without establishing recovery mechanisms that enable their flow and circulation back into the cultural / natural systems…[waste] is a link in the continuous flow of matter and energy.
Engineering systems are designed from the inside outward, that is, from components into a functioning whole. Behavior of a system is a consequence of interaction of its parts, parts that themselves must be understood and interconnected.
Landscape Lifecycles 