This story is part of a special focus on South Africa and how it is shaping the future and paving the way for the rest of the continent.

(CNN) What we may see as waste, others see as a resource.

New Horizons Energy is one such company producing gas and fuels out of trash.

One of its plants in Cape Town, worth $30 million, aims to consume 560 tons of solid waste per day. This is about seven percent of the total waste the six million residents of Cape Town produce daily.

"We are trying to be a landfill alternative which means we take waste from various sources, bring the waste in, clean it up, produce gas, produce fuels," Egmont Ottermann, New Horizons Energy's CEO, told CNN.

Companies such as waste removal company Wastemart already pays to deliver its waste to the plant.

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