Recycling
Let’s throw away old notions of waste: it’s time for new circular economy policies
http://www.edie.net/library/Its-time-for-new-circular-economy-policies-Peter-Lacy/6662
The circular economy is about much more than recycling and landfill. As Accenture’s Peter Lacy argues, businesses and consumers need governments to reward innovation through effective incentives.
Waste is at the heart of the way the world does business. We take, we make and we discard waste.
As countries run up against scarce resources and pollution, many governments have acted swiftly to reduce waste. But policymakers’ view of waste is often out of date and this risks missing the massive economic opportunity that waste now presents. The emergence of the circular economy calls for a total redefinition of waste and promises $4.5trn in unlocked growth.
The traditional approach to managing waste has come down to recycling and managing landfill. Other curbs have improved the efficient use of natural resources. But what about the wasted capacity in the cars that stand idle for 90% of the day? Or the wasted lifecycles as products are discarded after their first use? And what about the wasted embedded value that could be eliminated by repurposing materials? Or the wasted resources that could be reduced through renewable energy and materials?
Driving forces
This four-dimensional appreciation of waste forms the foundation of the circular economy that not only mitigates environmental damage but significantly reduces business costs and generates new revenue streams. Governments will be crucial to its success.
Let’s be clear that policy won’t be the only force driving the circular economy. Price already is transforming investments. For 40 years until the turn of the millennium, commodity prices decreased as growth surged. But this pattern then reversed dramatically as the rise of urban populations and middle class consumption led to intense shortages of many resources while putting others such as water and fertile soil under great stress. In recent years, prices have skyrocketed and crashed dramatically.
Businesses now feel the pain of unpredictable resource supplies and price volatility. Prices for metals like copper, iron, tin and nickel, have nearly doubled between 2000 and 2015. Despite the recent falls, the real price of oil in August 2015 was 55% higher than in August 2000. Businesses have no choice but to respond to such cost increases.
That’s why former EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik is right to insist that the key to good policymaking on the circular economy is the understanding that “waste is a resource and not a problem.”
To this end, many welcome the European Commission’s treatment of its new circular economy proposals as primarily an economic package – with fantastic environmental side effects. After all, for every percentage point reduction in EU resource use could be worth around €23bn to business and could result in 100,000 to 200,000 new jobs, according to Potočnik.
Supply and demand
In order to address waste across all its four dimensions, the priority for governments is to redesign regulations to encourage new consumer and business behaviours. That includes levelling the playing field between today’s linear models of take-make-waste and circular models. The financial attraction of growing through greater consumption of resources needs to be reduced. Companies must be encouraged to incorporate the cost of environmental impact into product pricing.
There is also a need to shift regulatory efforts from managing waste and landfill to pursuing a zero waste economy in the first place. That can include measures to stimulate demand for more resource efficient products through greater transparency on resource composition (through minimum packaging standards, for example).
But as much effort is required on the supply side. An improvement in the availability of information on waste and materials, reinforced by international standards, would help. Countries could follow the example of the WRAP initiative that helps all stakeholders use resources more efficiently. Extended Product Responsibility (EPR) policies can be used to make producers responsible for what happens to products after they have been consumed. Studies still show that collective responsibly for disposal is not as effective as making each manufacturer responsible for its own branded goods.
Taxation must be adjusted to back up new regulations. At a broad level, the imbalance between labour and resource taxation needs to be addressed. While commodities look set to be scarcer and more expensive, labour is likely to be cheaper and more plentiful. So a shift in the burden of taxation from labour to resource consumption could have the dual-benefit of creating jobs and encouraging efficiency. The International Labour Organization thinks that if a global tax on CO2 emissions were imposed (and the revenues used to cut taxes on labor) around 14 million jobs could be created.
Behaviour change
Taxation and policy should be consciously designed to support the emerging business models that will underpin the circular economy. For example, sharing platforms that make use of underutilized property, vehicles and other assets. 60% of truck capacity in the EU runs empty. Regulation could encourage commercial opportunities to turn that waste into revenue. Product-as-a-service models likewise encourage providers of products to maintain them for longer. The recovery of waste is a nascent market today and requires incentives that help companies transform the behaviours of supply chains to ensure the quality of repurposed waste is sufficient for re-use.
Government can also transform supply chains through more stringent demands in public procurement which represents a large proportion of consumption in many countries.
As the ‘take, make, waste’ economy runs up against scarce raw materials, market prices will encourage businesses and consumers to change their behaviours. Technology will also unleash new circular models. By seeing waste as an opportunity for competitiveness and growth, Governments will be better placed to implement wide reaching policies that will give their economies an even greater circular advantage.
Peter Lacy is managing director of Accenture Sustainability Services and co-author of Waste to Wealth: the Circular Economy Advantage.
Cycle of waste: City’s recycling industry needs must be addressed by Hong Kong government
Given our colour-coded dustbins have been in place for years, one would have thought that separation of waste for recycling would be a way of life now rather than a goal still to be achieved. But the sad reality is that there are still far too many households and individuals who pay little regard to the importance of recycling. The problem is compounded by the insufficient support given to the recycling industry.
Thankfully, that could be about to change. In a belated step, the government has launched a HK$1 billion fund to enhance the sustainability of the industry.
There are two funding programmes – a matching grant for upgrading and expanding recycling operations and one for non-profit and trade support organisations. The former offers grants equal to 50 per cent of approved expenditure for a two-year period for up to three projects with cumulative funding of HK$5 million; the latter gives 100 per cent grants capped at HK$15 million. The aim is to raise the quantity of recyclables, promote markets for products made of recycled materials and, ultimately, ease the burden on landfills.
But the industry appears to be sceptical about how effective the scheme will be. Some traders are wary about investing in new machinery when their profit margins are shrinking amid soaring rents and falling plastic and oil prices. Their concerns are valid. Officials should listen to their views and try harder to meet their needs.
Recycling of plastic bottles in the city has reportedly been suspended recently because there is no money to be made in the business. There are also suggestions that as soon as households have sorted their garbage into recycling bins, cleaners mix them together and send them to landfills. If that is the case, it would make a mockery of the upstream efforts in recycling.
Our regional neighbours, like Japan and Taiwan, have made much progress on waste reduction and recycling. It is a shame that we have spent so much effort in expanding our landfills, but are still tip-toeing around the introduction of a waste charge.
The government is seeking to raise the recycling rate to 55 per cent by 2022. Laudable as it is, the goal cannot be achieved unless there are good business prospects for the recycling industry. The funding scheme is a long overdue step to give the industry a helping hand. But it is important that the needs of the industry are addressed.
In Brazil, A City’s Waste Pickers Find Hope in a Pioneering Program
http://e360.yale.edu/digest/in_brazil_a_citys_waste_pickers_find_hope_in_a_pioneering_program/4558
By Robert Thornett
The millions of people worldwide who sift through trash for recyclable materials have been called “invisible environmentalists.” A rapidly growing program in Curitiba, Brazil now provides them with a living wage and a better life.
Each morning when Rosie Ribeiro Oliveira arrives at the new EcoCitizen recycling cooperative in her neighborhood of Parolin in Curitiba, Brazil, there is trash literally everywhere. And that’s a good thing.
“I spent 13 years in the streets gathering recyclables,” says the hard-working mother of five, “and I had to bring my kids to help me. Now I come here to work and my kids can go to school.”
Oliveira is one of more than 200,000 independent catadores, or waste pickers, in Brazil, a country that now registers “waste picker” as an official occupation. Since joining the EcoCitizen cooperative in February, she works three, four-hour shifts per day at the government-sponsored warehouse, dropping off and picking up her five girls from school during breaks. “I like to work alone,” says Oliveira on a break near her workstation. “For me, it’s faster.”
Curitiba, a city of 1.9 million with a tradition of progressive environmental and social policies, is leading the way globally in efforts to improve working conditions and social acceptance for the people who recycle society’s waste.
The city’s rapidly developing EcoCitizen program receives and processes recyclable materials at 19 different warehouses, where more than 600 members separate paper, plastics, glass, aluminum, and other materials. Run by Curitiba’s Department of Environment, the EcoCitizen program eliminates waste pickers’ need for sometimes-unscrupulous recycling middlemen, raises salaries, greatly improves working conditions, and leads to a cleaner city, advocates and officials say.
With investments of more than $6.5 million from the Brazil Development Bank, the EcoCitizen program has expanded from four recycling warehouse co-ops in 2007, to 13 in 2012, and 19 today. Two more will open by the end of this year, with 26 expected to in operation within a few years. The percentage of Curitiba’s recyclable materials handled by EcoCitizen co-ops has risen from 15 percent in 2013 to 70 percent today.
Millions of informal waste pickers worldwide make a living by collecting, sorting, recycling, and selling materials that have been thrown away. In some cities, these “invisible environmentalists” supply the only
In some cities, waste pickers are now supplying the only form of solid waste collection, at little or no cost.
form of solid waste collection, at little or no cost. Yet despite providing a valuable community service, they often have a negative public image, viewed as spreading trash and blocking traffic with their collection carts. They often live and work in deplorable conditions, rummaging through trash heaps in streets, dumps, and landfills.
That is changing. In Pune, India, waste pickers privately formed the 9,000-member cooperative SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling), which now holds government contracts to collect waste at 400,000 residences.
After protests and demonstrations, SWaCH workers have gained medical insurance from the city and, in recent years, worker identity cards and life insurance. Activists in other countries — from Bangladesh to China to Nicaragua — also are successfully campaigning to improve the lives of waste pickers while making recycling more efficient.
Curitiba calls EcoCitizen co-op members environmental “caregivers” and provides them with a modern warehouse, a city uniform, and tools such as paper shredders, balers, digital scales, trash compactors, and forklifts. Working out of the 19 co-op warehouses, member teams remain autonomous, operating like small independent businesses paid to both receive and process recyclables.
On a recent day in front of an EcoCitizen warehouse, Antonio de Ribera — wearing a bright green EcoCitizen vest — unloaded a giant 500-liter bag of recyclables from a “Trash That Is Not Trash” truck. Trash That Is Not Trash is Curitiba’s primary recycling collection program, picking up door-to-door for free up to three times per week. “It will all be separated by 10 pm,” said Antonio.
Earlier, across town in a different bairro, two trucks from Green Exchange, Curitiba’s second-largest recycling collection program, had rolled up curbside, where a line of waste pickers waited with carts loaded with recyclable materials. Green Exchange trades one kilogram of locally grown fruits and vegetables for every four kilos of recyclables at rotating sites around the city. By 10 a.m., one truck had distributed 101 kilos of bananas, oranges, beets, and squash, and the other had collected 404 kilos of recyclables, headed to EcoCitizen co-ops.
“Now by contract, the majority of Curitiba’s recyclables belong to the EcoCitizen members,” says Sanitary Engineer Marina Rymsza Ballão, supervisor of Trash That is Not Trash. “It’s like money delivered to them.”
According to EcoCitizen Program Manager Leila Zem, the steady stream of recyclables that city trucks deliver to coops averts the glaring “home depot” problem: Many informal waste pickers store recyclables in their backyards or even in their homes, while others sleep or live with recyclables in warehouses. This attracts rats and insects, and, during rains, causes water pollution, as many waste pickers live in marginal
The EcoCitizen program raises member incomes well above minimum wage, with members averaging around $400 per month.
land along Curitiba’s rivers.
Waste pickers also often face exploitation by middlemen, says Zem, who rent or lend them carts and later cheat them when weighing and paying for what they collect. EcoCitizen coops eliminate the middleman by providing free electric recycling carts and having teams weigh their own recyclables and negotiate their own deals with recycling companies.
The EcoCitizen program raises member incomes well above minimum wage, which is equivalent to $199 per month. On average, members make around $400 per month, but incomes can range up to $800 per month. While members are paid for their individual work, teams pool what they separate and then sell it in bulk to large recycling corporations, negotiating far better deals than the thousands of individual pickers on the street.
Robert Thornett is a geography professor at Northern Virginia Community College. He previously wrote for Yale Environment 360 on the use of K-9 units to foil poachers in Africa.
Hong Kong must ensure that those who generate waste are responsible for it
Edwin Lau welcomes the launch of a government recycling fund, but says a much more effective way to reduce Hong Kong’s waste is to cut it at source – such as by introducing a waste charge
The slowdown of the world economy, coupled with relatively low oil prices, has led to the price of recyclables plummeting this year, with plastics affected most.
Many recyclers have stopped collecting used plastic as their high running costs cannot be covered by such low-value recyclables. Furthermore, it is quite common for recyclers to have to pay an “entrance” fee to gain access to large residential estates or shopping malls to collect recyclables and this further adds to their financial burden.
Without a waste charging law, most businesses and individuals do not take serious steps to manage their waste
Besides plastics, the price of metal and paper have also dropped substantially. Recently, I walked around several recycling shops; the cheapest price for iron was 50 cents per kilogram, paper, 40 cents per kilogram – with no price offered for plastic. Worryingly, without government and private-sector assistance, even if we put clean plastic into recycling bins, it will probably end up in landfills.
The government’s HK$1 billion Recycling Fund to reduce waste disposal is finally with us, and is accepting applications from this month. Officials hope the fund will enhance the efficiency of the recycling industry by subsidising the purchase of machines and trucks, as well as training for workers and the like.
However, having talked to people who run recycling businesses, it seems the industry is not simply looking for subsidies to buy more or new machinery; instead, they want the fund to help tackle their immediate challenge – the high costs of labour, rent, insurance and other items that the current value of recyclables cannot even cover, let alone enable them to make a profit.
Our neighbour Taipei has regulations that require producers to be responsible for the waste generated by their businesses. They are required by law to contribute money to a fund established by the government to subsidise collectors and therefore ensure more types of recyclables are collected. Here in Hong Kong, only construction and demolition waste, plus plastic shopping bags, have mandatory charges. We are still awaiting effective policies for waste charging and producer responsibility.
The problem appears to be that the government doesn’t want to give recurrent subsidies to help the recycling industry, hence the one-off Recycling Fund.
It may not be best for the government to give long-term subsidies to the industry, but it should speed up the introduction of producer responsibility legislation so recyclers who collect packaging waste on their behalf get financial support.
Without a waste charging law, most businesses and individuals do not take serious steps to manage their waste. Most corporations take a wait-and-see attitude on government regulations. On their own, they are unlikely to provide any resources for waste management.
Individuals, too, often don’t see the full picture. Take wedding banquets. The hosts often thought they were being environmentally friendly by allowing a non-governmental organisation to collect leftover food at the end – yet most are unwilling to pay the NGO’s transport costs. Few people see that they are the ones who are responsible for the waste generated, and the NGOs are providing a service.
With the Recycling Fund, the government has taken another step to help the industry. We should welcome this step, however small.
Companies in Hong Kong should also do their part. They should commit a small amount of money to managing their waste and, more importantly, set targets to encourage their employees to reduce waste at source. Cutting the use of plastic water bottles could be a good starting point.
Edwin Lau Che-feng is head of community engagement and partnership at Friends of the Earth (HK). www.foe.org.hk [4]
7 Reasons Why Recycling Is Not a Waste: A Response to ‘The Reign of Recycling’
http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/waste_not/tom_szaky/7_reasons_why_recycling_not_waste_response_reign_recycling?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=brandsweekly&utm_campaign=oct15&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoluq7NZKXonjHpfsX56ugtUaa1lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4FRMJiI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFTrTBMbVxyLgOXxk%3D
Recycling in the United States is an economically unsustainable trend — or at least that’s what New York Times writer John Tierney recently argued in his opinion piece, “The Reign of Recycling,” published in the October 4th Sunday Review. Tierney’s arguments focus almost entirely on the inefficiency and economic viability of recycling, suggesting that CPG companies and major brands, municipalities, and even consumers should stop worrying about recycling, and that linear disposal methods are successful enough for the sake of cost-effectiveness and profitability. I believe that this is a dangerous conclusion to make in the 21st century, a time where the need for long-term sustainability strategies and circular waste solutions are more apparent than ever.
We know full well the function economics play in recycling. If the value of a potentially recyclable commodity is higher than collection, logistic and processing costs, there is an economic incentive to recycle. But what about obviously less recyclable materials, such as multilayered films or plastic sachet packaging — materials that are, universally, considered non-recyclable? To go along with Tierney’s argument, landfilling and incineration are the only economically viable alternatives.
This focus on short-term economic viability is problematic, as it disregards the critical need for a more circular system of manufacturing and consumption. We don’t push for better education or health care based on whether they are economically justifiable institutions — we do it because there is a social imperative. Telling corporations and the public that recycling — save for a very select few materials — is essentially a waste undermines the need for more comprehensive strategies supporting sustainable development: reusing materials when we can, recycling those materials when we can’t, and decreasing the consumption of unsustainable materials bound for landfill.
There are a variety of environmental subjects that Tierney does not approach: the trillions of pieces of plastic floating on top and piling up on the bottom of our oceans; the difficulty of accurately identifying the health risks posed by waste incineration; the destructive linear model of consumption and production that resigns raw materials to single-use lives (burying waste and other materials in a landfill or burning in an incinerator). These (among many, many others) are all relevant topics that must be considered to accurately determine the environmental effects of our currently wasteful society.
Tierney also brings up the price comparison between recycled plastics and the plunging price of virgin plastic, thanks in no small part to the recent dip in oil prices. He fails to mention, however, the incredible volatility of global crude oil prices. In fact, a rebound is already predicted to occur over the course of the next five years. Recycled plastics can be a great way for manufacturers to avoid these volatile costs, do something environmentally beneficial, and strengthen supply chain security.
Recycled material in general can be a great way to build supply chain security overall. My company, for example, works with dozens of manufacturers to facilitate the collection and recycling of their pre- and post-consumer product and packaging waste. In a variety of these partnerships, after aggregating the collected waste we send it back to the manufacturer, where the recycled material is reintegrated into existing supply chains. It reduces waste and costs, and gives the company a competitive edge in the market.
As the need for sustainability strategies rises, even government institutions are increasingly demanding more recycled content in products, more recyclable packaging, and more substantial overall sustainability practices. Packaging taxes and extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation is already active in many parts of the world, making manufacturers responsible for the collection and recycling (or reuse) of their pre- and post-consumer packaging waste.
The European Der Grüne Punkt (The Green Dot) network is possibly the most notable EPR system in the world, essentially taxing product manufacturers based on their waste-diversion strategies. The Green Dot’s licensing fees act as an incentive to increase sustainability practices, encouraging product manufacturers to collect and recycle their pre- and post-consumer waste (lowering their respective fees as a result). These strategies can help create a better ecological balance between production and consumption.
We can’t forget about consumers in this conversation either, as they are increasingly prone to making purchasing decisions based on product — and packaging — sustainability. Conscious consumers are reading labels and packaging for recyclability and sustainability claims, buying from socially responsible CPG companies, and are even inclined to pay premiums for eco-friendly or socially responsible products. Does this mean that consumers are falling into a “green marketing” trap, or — gasp! — that they actually care about the planet? Consumers will reward those manufacturers that make environmental stewardship, recyclability, and sustainability a part of their business models.
We have to take a step back and evaluate the economic and environmental costs to potential alternatives to recycling. Calling on short-term efficiencies and a lack of profitability will do nothing but undermine future efforts to strengthen our recycling infrastructure and to sustainably develop for future generations. Being complacent with our disposable society is not how we will accomplish this.
I couldn’t help but note the irony of the Times running an opinion piece decrying recycling because of a lack of obvious profitably on the very same day that yet another US State — South Carolina — was experiencing historic flooding and being called to a State of Emergency. The tragic events in South Carolina are leading to loss of life and billions of dollars of damage to public and private property. Unfortunately, Mr. Tierney and his editors at the New York Times failed to include these costs in their myopic calculations.
7 Reasons Why Recycling Is Not a Waste: A Response to ‘The Reign of Recycling’
http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/waste_not/tom_szaky/7_reasons_why_recycling_not_waste_response_reign_recycling
Recycling in the United States is an economically unsustainable trend — or at least that’s what New York Times writer John Tierney recently argued in his opinion piece, “The Reign of Recycling,” published in the October 4th Sunday Review. Tierney’s arguments focus almost entirely on the inefficiency and economic viability of recycling, suggesting that CPG companies and major brands, municipalities, and even consumers should stop worrying about recycling, and that linear disposal methods are successful enough for the sake of cost-effectiveness and profitability. I believe that this is a dangerous conclusion to make in the 21st century, a time where the need for long-term sustainability strategies and circular waste solutions are more apparent than ever.
We know full well the function economics play in recycling. If the value of a potentially recyclable commodity is higher than collection, logistic and processing costs, there is an economic incentive to recycle. But what about obviously less recyclable materials, such as multilayered films or plastic sachet packaging — materials that are, universally, considered non-recyclable? To go along with Tierney’s argument, landfilling and incineration are the only economically viable alternatives.
This focus on short-term economic viability is problematic, as it disregards the critical need for a more circular system of manufacturing and consumption. We don’t push for better education or health care based on whether they are economically justifiable institutions — we do it because there is a social imperative. Telling corporations and the public that recycling — save for a very select few materials — is essentially a waste undermines the need for more comprehensive strategies supporting sustainable development: reusing materials when we can, recycling those materials when we can’t, and decreasing the consumption of unsustainable materials bound for landfill.
There are a variety of environmental subjects that Tierney does not approach: the trillions of pieces of plastic floating on top and piling up on the bottom of our oceans; the difficulty of accurately identifying the health risks posed by waste incineration; the destructive linear model of consumption and production that resigns raw materials to single-use lives (burying waste and other materials in a landfill or burning in an incinerator). These (among many, many others) are all relevant topics that must be considered to accurately determine the environmental effects of our currently wasteful society.
Tierney also brings up the price comparison between recycled plastics and the plunging price of virgin plastic, thanks in no small part to the recent dip in oil prices. He fails to mention, however, the incredible volatility of global crude oil prices. In fact, a rebound is already predicted to occur over the course of the next five years. Recycled plastics can be a great way for manufacturers to avoid these volatile costs, do something environmentally beneficial, and strengthen supply chain security.
Recycled material in general can be a great way to build supply chain security overall. My company, for example, works with dozens of manufacturers to facilitate the collection and recycling of their pre- and post-consumer product and packaging waste. In a variety of these partnerships, after aggregating the collected waste we send it back to the manufacturer, where the recycled material is reintegrated into existing supply chains. It reduces waste and costs, and gives the company a competitive edge in the market.
As the need for sustainability strategies rises, even government institutions are increasingly demanding more recycled content in products, more recyclable packaging, and more substantial overall sustainability practices. Packaging taxes and extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation is already active in many parts of the world, making manufacturers responsible for the collection and recycling (or reuse) of their pre- and post-consumer packaging waste.
The European Der Grüne Punkt (The Green Dot) network is possibly the most notable EPR system in the world, essentially taxing product manufacturers based on their waste-diversion strategies. The Green Dot’s licensing fees act as an incentive to increase sustainability practices, encouraging product manufacturers to collect and recycle their pre- and post-consumer waste (lowering their respective fees as a result). These strategies can help create a better ecological balance between production and consumption.
We can’t forget about consumers in this conversation either, as they are increasingly prone to making purchasing decisions based on product — and packaging — sustainability. Conscious consumers are reading labels and packaging for recyclability and sustainability claims, buying from socially responsible CPG companies, and are even inclined to pay premiums for eco-friendly or socially responsible products. Does this mean that consumers are falling into a “green marketing” trap, or — gasp! — that they actually care about the planet? Consumers will reward those manufacturers that make environmental stewardship, recyclability, and sustainability a part of their business models.
We have to take a step back and evaluate the economic and environmental costs to potential alternatives to recycling. Calling on short-term efficiencies and a lack of profitability will do nothing but undermine future efforts to strengthen our recycling infrastructure and to sustainably develop for future generations. Being complacent with our disposable society is not how we will accomplish this.
I couldn’t help but note the irony of the Times running an opinion piece decrying recycling because of a lack of obvious profitably on the very same day that yet another US State — South Carolina — was experiencing historic flooding and being called to a State of Emergency. The tragic events in South Carolina are leading to loss of life and billions of dollars of damage to public and private property. Unfortunately, Mr. Tierney and his editors at the New York Times failed to include these costs in their myopic calculations.
Where Our Trash Goes
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/where-our-trash-goes.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
Readers take issue with a Sunday Review essay that said recycling has failed in economic and environmental terms.
To the Editor: Re “The Reign of Recycling” (Sunday Review, Oct. 4):
John Tierney’s article fails to understand the psychology of recycling. The habit of recycling encourages people to consider their personal impact on the environment, and, yes, it makes people feel good about themselves. Decades of research in psychology has shown that recycling behavior has positive spillovers; it makes people more likely to help the environment in many other important ways.
A garbage tax (on trash that goes to the landfill) will likely do the exact opposite. Behavioral research has taught us that giving people the option to “buy out” of their environmental responsibility undermines their personal motivation to help.
Long-term environmental problems call for long-term changes in human behavior. Advising people to stuff their garbage deep inside the earth because that’s what we have always done is exactly the type of thinking that got us here in the first place. Just because societies had open sewage systems for over a thousand years doesn’t mean it is a good idea. Whatever the inefficiencies of the recycling process may be, misinforming people that recycling is a waste of time is not going to help the environment.
SANDER VAN DER LINDEN
Princeton, N.J.
The writer is a researcher, lecturer and social psychologist at Princeton University who directs the Social and Environmental Decision-Making Lab.
To the Editor:
“The Reign of Recycling” and its attack on the benefits of recycling could not have been more off-base.
Recycling and composting are cost-effective and efficient ways to fight climate change and provide other social and environmental benefits.
For example, San Francisco’s pioneering composting program uses food scraps and yard trimmings to produce rich soil for farmers in California instead of sending them to the landfill, where they would produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In addition, soil produced from compost retains up to 20 times its weight in water, a significant benefit during California’s drought.
It only makes sense for the State of California to effectively eliminate the disposal of organic material by 2025 by turning it into more useful products. Moreover, processing recycleables can create 20 times as many jobs as sending material to landfills.
After more than a thousand years of burying our trash in landfills, it is time to update the use and disposal of precious resources for the 21st century.
EDWIN M. LEE
San Francisco
The writer is the mayor of San Francisco.
To the Editor: John Tierney’s sadly shortsighted essay on recycling completely misses the key problem in our consuming society: the front end. With the production side held completely unaccountable, recycling becomes an impossible game of catch-up. Mr. Tierney, as he’s done so often before, scorns the left hand for trying to clean up a horrific mess that the right hand has created.
A sane solution would be to require everything that our society produces and consumes to be reusable or compostable, with a clear plan where it will all go once it’s served its initial purpose. Is that really so hard to do?
HARVEY WASSERMAN
Bexley, Ohio
To the Editor: Recycling does seem very costly compared with its supposed benefits.
Some readers are old enough (as I am) to remember when soda and beer bottles were returned to the store where purchased and, instead of being crushed, were refilled with the same product and then resold. With modern means, couldn’t chips be incorporated into appropriate containers to expedite the process? Is it really necessary to destroy and remake containers, particularly energy-intensive glass and aluminum?
Refilling instead of recycling could provide local jobs and avoid the costs, economic and environmental, of transporting the recycled material vast distances to be reutilized.
New labeling could be applied to help alleviate the American abhorrence of “used” containers.
ANDREA GOLDEN
Arlington, Mass.
To the Editor: John Tierney misses the point of recycling by largely limiting his viewpoint of its benefits to monetization of waste. Surely the question of whether money can be made from recycling is of interest only to corporations in the business of processing waste.
Few countries in the world are blessed with both enough space to hide waste in landfills and the infrastructure needed to move waste from consumers to landfills. In traveling the globe, I’ve been struck repeatedly by scenes such as the vast numbers of plastic bags blowing across the Moroccan desert and household waste simply dumped in many Asian villages.
Many people living in or close to poverty simply have no options for getting rid of inorganic household waste that cannot be processed locally. Recycling is one important channel in a comprehensive program for waste management that delivers a clean, safe living space.
While first-world countries can pat themselves on the back for progress with paper, metal and plastics, the record is not good for many other kinds of waste, much of it dangerous. In the United States, options for handling toxic fluids such as automotive oil and paint thinners are inconvenient to consumers and not widely available. The same is true for pharmaceuticals, which when flushed into bodies of water endanger wildlife and whole ecosystems.
Globally, there remains much to be done, and making a buck should not be anyone’s priority.
KEVIN GROSS
Stow, Mass.
To the Editor: While it is true that recycling post-consumer plastics has been a tough nut to crack technologically, and recovery rates have plateaued at about 30 percent nationally, tremendous progress has been made in just the past few years.
I am chairman of a recycling company that has spent the past eight years developing a sustainable business model, driven by new technology and no government handouts, to take unsorted post-consumer plastic waste from residents and separate everything automatically so that every single resin type and plastic form is usable by a paying customer.
Just last year, we signed our first contract to supply 300 million pounds of previously nonrecyclable plastic to a Fortune 500 company. Our projections are that this technology, when rolled out nationally, will be diverting three billion pounds of plastic waste from our city streets, oceans and landfills by 2020.
With so much blood and treasure spent to secure the petroleum-based resources to make plastics, it is thoroughly immoral to simply throw them back into a hole.
MITCH HECHT
Wilton, Conn.
To the Editor: Incredibly, John Tierney fails to mention the most obvious, and most important, alternative (or complement) to recycling: reducing waste to begin with. It’s not that hard.
Ten years ago I started carrying around a stainless steel water bottle everywhere I go. This one easy step dissolved my need for not only bottled water, but most other to-go drinks, too. Same goes for my trusty morning thermos — my coffee stays hotter, there’s no leaching from cheap Styrofoam or plastic-lined cups, and no waste. Same for take-out: Eat there or cook at home, and forgo the mountain of waste.
The list goes on: reusable grocery bags, buying bulk dry goods rather than individually packaged, forgoing the plastic bag at the corner store. You get the idea. These few strategies dramatically reduce the amount of trash and recycling I generate on any given day. It’s not hard; just do it.
ELLIOT COHEN
Boulder, Colo.
To the Editor: The elephant in the room in John Tierney’s article is: Why do we continue to manufacture plastic for spurious purposes? We hear about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, about microplastics that are poisoning the sea, about turtles shaped like hourglasses because they grow inside a six-pack ring.
We can drink tap water out of nondisposable containers rather than bottled water; we do not need to drink coffee from a Styrofoam cup with a half life of hundreds of years; and we do not need large plastic toys for children. Plastic should be treated as a special material that can be a life saver in medical uses (stents) and marvelous for things like flexible plumbing pipe. But pretending that we can throw it away without consequences is criminal.
JULIA O’NEAL
Ocean Springs, Miss.
To the Editor: While John Tierney is correct is describing the current economic plight of the recycling industry, he doesn’t mention how the recycling industry — and the solid waste industry of which it is a part — is changing.
Driven by technology and economics, parts of the country are moving away from the current recycling model. Optical sorting, computerized scanning and enhanced mechanical devices have made such developments possible. Montgomery, Ala., established a new system in which residents no longer sort their trash. Instead, the material goes to a sorting facility, where organics are separated from inorganics, and metals, paper, glass and plastic are sorted. The plan is for the organics go to an anaerobic digester; only the residue from the process will be landfilled.
In California, localities such as San Jose are experimenting with a system in which “wet trash” (organics) are placed in one bin, and “dry trash” (everything else) in another bin. The dry portion is mechanically and optically sorted for recyclables of value, and the organic fraction is diverted to an anaerobic digester and used for energy.
While neither of these approaches achieves zero waste, 60 to 70 percent of the stream is being repurposed.
EILEEN BRETTLER BERENYI
Westport, Conn.
The writer is president of Governmental Advisory Associates.
Hong Kong government launches HK$1b recycling fund, but industry figures have doubts about its effectiveness
Ernest Kao ernest.kao@scmp.com
But industry figures have doubts about the effectiveness of the scheme
Applications have opened for the government’s HK$1 billion recycling fund, with the first batch of grants set to be handed out to successful applicants in March.
Environment Secretary Wong Kam-sing said the fund, announced in last year’s policy address and approved by the legislature in July, would help increase the quantity and quality of recyclables in the market and reduce pressure on the city’s overflowing landfills.
“The purpose of the fund is to support the healthy and sustainable development of the recycling industry and market,” Wong said at the launch yesterday.
The deadline for applications for the first batch is November 30.
The fund comprises two programmes – a matching fund for individual enterprises to upgrade and expand their waste recycling operations in which a HK$1of funding is provided for every HK$1 invested, and another targeted at non-profit and trade support organisations to “enhance the overall capability and productivity of the local recycling industry”.
The former offers grants equivalent to 50 per cent of approved expenditure for a two-year period for up to three projects with cumulative funding of HK$5 million. The latter offers 100 per cent grants with a cap set at HK$15 million.
Under the enterprise support programme, small and medium-sized recycling businesses can also apply for subsidies for smaller scale projects such as manpower training and occupational safety. These grants, requiring “less paperwork”, will be capped at HK$150,000 for a one-year project.
Scrap plastic recycler Lee Wai-man said he would apply for both programmes, but the biggest problem was not a lack of machinery but rising rents, a lack of land and a shrinking labour market.
“Sure you can give us a few million dollars to buy some fancy new machinery but in a few years our rents will soar,” he said. “My youngest employee is 47 years old and will probably quit in a few years. Who am I going to train with this money?”
Jacky Lau Yiu-shing, director of the Recycled Materials and Reproduction Business General Association, had earlier said that falling prices of plastic as a result of an economic slowdown and declining oil prices had caused frontline recyclers to stop collecting the material.
“We may have the machinery and processing capability, but we don’t have the stock,” he said.
Jimmy Kwok Chun-wah, who chairs the newly set up advisory committee to manage the fund, said it would be difficult to provide subsidies from the fund to prop up the prices of recyclables in the market. “There’s no way the fund can offer this right now as the prices of recyclables in the market will always be fluctuating,” he said.
Cathay Pacific’s green campaign takes a nose-dive as it emerges it’s recycling less and emitting more carbon dioxide than ever
Danny Lee danny.lee@scmp.com
Cathay Pacific’s green campaign appears to have slumped, with the volume of plastic bottles it recycles dropping by more than half in the space of three years.
And the amount of carbon dioxide its planes emit into the atmosphere has reached its highest level ever.
In unveiling the airline’s latest sustainability report yesterday, chief executive Ivan Chu Kwok-leung said: “As an airline, we unavoidably emit carbon when we operate, but it’s important we do things to compensate for that so that we can leave a good legacy for the future.”
In last year, Cathay Pacific and sister company Dragonair recycled 22,360kg of plastic cups, 20,797kg of plastic bottles, and 16,933kg of aluminium cans on Cathay Pacific inbound flights to Hong Kong. Cathay managed to recycle as much as 55,000kg of plastic bottles in 2011 but has failed to sustain that level.
On Monday night Cathay blamed the falling volume of recycled waste on suppliers using lighter materials.
A company spokeswoman said: “For example, the new 9oz plastic cup used in economy class is 33 per cent lighter than the previous cup and is more elastic, durable and recyclable. This would contribute to the falling weight of our recycling materials over the years.”
Hong Kong’s biggest airline said last month that it was ramping up efforts to reduce inflight waste and source more sustainable materials.
With rising emissions, the company defended the rise. The airline explained it is operating more flights than ever before to more destinations, and flying further. Cathay and Dragonair’s fleet of 188 aircraft are also filling up with more passengers and more seats are being added. All combined means carbon emissions per passenger is lower.
“While we expect our emissions to increase in relation to our business growth, our absolute emissions cannot be viewed in isolation of our fuel efficiency improvement. Instead both need to be viewed together to get the full picture,” a Cathay spokeswoman said.
The biggest gas-guzzling aircraft, including the four-engine passenger Boeing 747 aircraft and Airbus A340, will leave the fleet by 2017.
The rise in carbon dioxide emissions may slow or fall in coming years as Cathay is set to receive the first of 48 greener jets – the Airbus A350 – in February. These use around 20 per cent less fuel.