But for Dunedin student Jeremy Metherell, it could be a case of one organisation's waste is another person's warmth.
Reverse-pitching was introduced to this year's Audacious business challenge, involving people, organisations or businesses pitching a problem they were facing to people who were entrepreneurial and keen to help solve it.
The Southern District Health Board was looking for creative solutions to deal with piles of single-use polypropylene plastic wrap used in surgery.
After the SDHB's pitch to students, Mr Metherell (23), a second-year student studying product design at Otago Polytechnic, came up with a few theories for what could be done, including the possibility of replacing the current product with one that was reusable.
But, being a student, he decided that would be quite a difficult assignment, and involve a lot of materials and experimentation to get it off the ground.
So he decided to look at what could be done with the existing product, of which Dunedin Hospital generated about 3.5 tonnes each year, he said.
He came up with various ideas, ranging from water filters to bags and even overalls for painters. But he decided the most viable option was turning it into insulation.
He had seen houses being built with ''different and interesting'' forms of insulation, ranging from tyres to plastic bottles.
Polypropylene was used for thermal clothing and he figured that its plastic properties could be good for insulation.
Mr Metherell's entry in Audacious has already made it through to the top 20 business ideas. Now it was a matter of refining how to go about it and coming up with a business model to accompany it.
He had not yet got to the stage of fully prototyping his idea but that would have to happen if he carried on to the next stage, he said.
He believed the project had potential as a viable business. At the moment, his problem was whether he had enough time and whether he could find people with the right skills to help him.
He was ''pretty stoked'' to make it through to the top 20, and the next round included submitting a detailed business plan and pitching the idea to the judges in a Dragons' Den-type scenario.
The project had made him aware of ''a whole lot of other things'' he had never thought of when it came to starting a business, he said.