2020 visions — and a zero waste world?

So how will we be dealing with waste in two decades’ time? Maggie Thurgood gives a personal view of a less wasteful world.

Whatever we decide about waste, business as usual is clearly not an option. Its outcome is easy to predict: more waste than we can handle, irreparable loss of resources, and a regulator struggling to keep the lid on it all. On current performance, insufficient licensed waste management facilities will have been developed to cope with the rising tide of rubbish. Result? A waste of resources, and a danger of lasting harm to both local environments and public health.

So what will the picture look like in 2020? Will we as individuals and as business leaders insist on buying and discarding goods indiscriminately, or will we learn — or be persuaded by pressure on our pockets — to buy wisely and use carefully? Will we still be reading flytipping and dioxin scares — or will we have well-managed, strategically located waste facilities, able to treat rapidly diminishing piles of carefully sorted waste types appropriately? Do we want by then to be demolishing incinerators because they have served their purpose and are no longer needed — or to be continuing to generate increasing quantities of waste while we fight endless tussles over where to site the damn things?

Government policy will be a key driver here, and one of the prime ways it can influence behaviour will be through our pockets. The use of taxation to discourage consumption of raw materials, along with the provision of incentives for products to be re-used or refurbished, must be high on the wish list of anyone hoping for a saner waste strategy.

But technological breakthroughs, too, will play a major role. The rise of ‘electronic paper’ and mobile-style handheld communicators, for example, could dramatically reduce the millions of tonnes of inky newsprint we get through every day (as well as leaving commuters on the 7:52 with nothing to hide behind).

Development often comes as a result of adversity, so perhaps one of the business success stories of the future might be the production of natural polymers (biodegradable plastics) by farmers whose herds were destroyed by the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001, and who diversified into arable crops. Finite oil reserves could be conserved, and waste disposal simplified, by the use of such materials as substitutes for oil-based plastics in many applications — leaving the oil for uses for which there is no substitute. (A shift in this direction, combined with the widespread introduction of hydrogen-powered vehicles, could dramatically reduce our dependence on this most politically-volatile of resources.)

Another revolution could come in the way waste is sorted. Spurred by financial sticks and carrots, we may all routinely separate our waste into clean streams for direct delivery to reprocessors without the need for hand sorting on dusty conveyor belts. Some have suggested concentrating householders’ minds with a system of fines for wasteful sins such as placing recyclables and compostables with residual waste, failing to return re-usable containers, or discarding items that could have been refurbished.

In this more waste-sensitive future, every town could have its own community garden where organic kitchen and garden waste is composted, and fruit and vegetables are grown for sale in the local farmers’ market, eliminating long distance transport of certain staple foods along with the sophisticated handling and packaging systems it requires. On a wider scale, towns and cities might establish ‘eco-parks’ where industrial symbiosis will allow neighbouring businesses to use one another’s waste in substitution of virgin resources, reducing transport movement. This is already under way in Kalundborg, Denmark [see GF34, piv] and the ‘Urban Mines’ network hopes to achieve similar sucesses in the UK [ibid.]. Meanwhile, something of the sort is already under way as part of the ReMade projects.

There’s scope for substantial progress in construction, too. More sustainable building practices should mean reduced wastage, thanks to better on-site management of materials

We will have learnt how to demolish old buildings carefully, reclaiming everything usable, so that little ends up in landfill. We will have adapted materials specifications on a fitness for purpose basis, and even be able to cope with the fact that reclaimed bricks were made in imperial measurements, not metric. Centralised waste exchanges will overcome the challenges of tracking down reclaimed and waste materials in sufficient volume.

Product designers will have mastered modular construction for ease of dismantling, while, encouraged by a sympathetic fiscal climate, new service companies will have been developed to lease a vast range of products, from televisions and computers to cars and bicycles, making their takeback and upgrading simpler. Small scale waste-fired boilers will provide central heating and hot water for large buildings, and energy efficiency will be the norm.

As individuals and businesses begin to take greater responsibility for waste, we should also take a more active role in decision making, insisting that waste management is properly funded and conducted to the highest possible standards, whatever technology is employed. But most of all, perhaps, we need to address resource consumption. In its latest Global Environmental Outlook, the UN Environment Programme points out: "One of the three pillars of sustainable development, the environment, is seriously listing because of the distortions placed on it by human actions. We need to reduce the excessive consumption of the more affluent — as long as the richest 20% continue to account for 86% of consumption, sustainable development will never be achieved."

A 'zero waste' future

In the foreword to Zero Waste, a new book by Robin Murray, Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace, says: "The question is not whether zero waste can be achieved, but how it can be used as a policy driver."

Murray believes that "waste has moved from the margins to the political mainstream" and that global concerns about forest cover, mining degradation and soil loss cast a new perspective on old newspapers and discarded tin cans. "From the perspective of resource productivity," he says, "it is a question of what waste could be."

The ‘zero waste’ concept originated in manufacturing industry, where the initial objective was simply to reduce emissions of wastewater, pollution and solid waste. The policy fits well with cleaner production, an approach being increasingly adopted by industry worldwide.

Whether it fits so easily with household waste policies is yet to be seen, but it seems clear that it will feature in future strategies if for no other reason than it is a simple, aspirational and readily understood message, even if the aim is not — in the short term — wholly achievable. One of the first cities to adopt a zero waste policy was Canberra, Australia’s national capital. The city’s ‘No Waste by 2010’ strategy was announced in 1996, although the city recognises that it is not possible for residents to stop generating waste. The ‘No Waste’ objective is to maximise landfill diversion by minimisation, composting and recycling. At present there are no energy-from-waste facilities, but the manager of the city’s waste management division, Graham Mannall, acknowledges that there will be a need for some form of energy recovery in order to reach the ‘No Waste’ goal. Even then, he concedes, there will inevitably be some waste for landfill for the time being.

In the UK, Bath and North-East Somerset Council has also adopted a zero waste policy [see GF 33, p13]. Others are poised to follow suit.

19 July 2002

Maggie Thurgood