So What

Will my little wrapper really do any harm...?

Does waste really matter? If we can treat and dispose of it safely, is it such a big deal? In moderation, no - because we know how to manage it, and because some wastes are pretty unavoidable: almost everything we do generates waste.

Taken to excess, though — which we are presently in danger of doing — then yes, it does matter, and on two counts. First, we are wasting both renewable and non-renewable resources, and clearly the latter is least sustainable (although even non-renewable resources are not necessarily scarce. Think aluminium). Secondly, we are putting pressure on the environment’s ability to cope, in terms of the impacts of resource extraction and manufacturing, as well as the treatment and disposal of the residues. Given the fact that, however good we become at reducing and recycling, there will always be some waste remaining, we should preserve the waste storage and treatment capacity for those inevitable leftovers, and aim to reduce the rest progressively towards zero. And thirdly, by defining something as ‘waste’, we are failing to see its potential as a resource.

If ‘sustainable’ is defined as something that can be continued indefinitely, then ‘sustainable waste management’ may itself be a contradiction. But it seems clear that we can improve on what we are doing now, and make it less unsustainable. Doing so, however, will involve taking a long hard look at some of our assumptions about waste — particularly those around ‘recycling’. Rather than simply focus on minimising the amount we send for disposal, we need to see it in the context of overall resource consumption and environmental impact — and this can lead to some awkward questions.

For example, how do we equate the savings in raw materials from recycling steel cans with the fuel needed to transport them the 150 miles to be smelted? How can we compare the emissions from incinerators equipped to ‘recover’ energy, with the avoided consumption of finite fossil fuels to generate electricity?

The science (or is it an art?) of life cycle assessment sets out ways of evaluating impacts, but is fraught with difficulty, not least because arbitrary boundaries have to be set: do you include the fuel that drove the motors that extracted the iron ore, or do you start with the smelting process? And collecting detailed data to evaluate a complex process such as manufacturing a car, TV or washing machine is highly time consuming, and will generate a huge set of numbers which must then be subjectively compared — and will not take account of the fact that the way the product is used will have a considerable influence on its life cycle impact. Both manufacturing a washing machine and disposing of it at the end of its life have far lower environmental impacts than the period of its use, when it consumes electricity, water and detergents. (Marks & Spencer put the clothes they sell through a life cycle energy audit, and the grisly detail that came out in the wash was that up to 70% of the energy consumed by our clothes is accounted for by just that — washing them.)

Now none of this diminishes the need to reduce the resources used to make washing machines (or clothes), or to recover or recycle as many as possible of those resources after their useful life — but it does mean that policies whose stated goal is to reduce the environmental impact of waste should take all those factors into account — which is often not the case in practice.

Many researchers and statisticians have used energy as a common currency when trying to make such calculations, as this avoids the need to compare apples with pears. On that basis, recent research found that a typical family choosing a small saloon car with half the fuel consumption of a four-wheel drive saves in one year the energy equivalent of recycling all its glass bottles over four centuries. So, as we run through the hierarchy of ways to curb waste, we need to keep our eye on the big picture, as well as making all the small changes that will, collectively, make a difference.

19 July 2002

Maggie Thurgood