A bid to incinerate tonnes of waste is billed as better than burying it, but doubts about highly toxic fallout worry neighbours including a nearby dairy factory. In Part II of Air of uncertainty, Andrea Graves asks, ‘shouldn’t we just create less waste?’
Squabbling over whether landfill or incineration is best keeps us staring in the wrong direction, says Sue Coutts of the Zero Waste Network. She says we should focus on reducing the amount of waste that needs disposing.
Europe is doing that. Denmark is shutting down 30% of its waste disposal incinerators in order to increase recycling and composting, and to cut climate emissions. European Union regulations mean many new incinerators fail a “do no significant harm” test. The guidance says that’s because they “hamper the development and deployment of available low-impact alternatives with higher levels of environmental performance (eg, reuse, recycling), and could lead to a lock-in of high-impact assets considering their lifetime and capacity”.
What are those alternatives, and can we get them? Product stewardship schemes help, although the only comprehensive one here so far is Tyrewise. A container return scheme waits in the wings. These approaches are largely about recycling, which is still close to what Coutts calls the ambulance at the bottom of the waste-minimisation cliff. “We hear the downstream story about the waste disposal problem, but the real action is upstream. There are so many good ideas we haven’t put into practice.”
Libraries, laundrettes, hirepools and public transport already reduce waste. But consider a system that supplies and collects reusable bottles, containers and serviceware, employing local people at sanitising plants. There’s Mint Innovation, which extracts valuable metals from e-waste that go into new tech products. This closes the loop, reducing the need for mining. Mint recently commercialised in Sydney instead of New Zealand due to our meagre e-waste collection (all other OECD countries have a national scheme). There are options for textiles, pallets, postage and construction.
All require supportive policy, regulation levers and startup funding. That’s where the waste levy should be helping, an analysis by consultants Sapere recommended last October. “We suggest MfE [Ministry for the Environment] increases its appetite for projects which are targeted at waste prevention … and thereby reduces demand for products made from virgin materials.” Focusing on waste management infrastructure, it said, risks supporting the development of a sector that depends on consistently high flows of waste.
Sapere said long-term national planning around future waste management objectives would help, because currently there is none. Europe is a leader in that, says Coutts. “It’s a big battle that takes strong leadership. The European Union has been really successful in generating change. They say, ‘This is a rule that we’re going to apply across our territory.’ Then they put resources in to make it happen.”
Read Part I of Air of Uncertainty here.
