by Kate O’Neill, 2019
Interesting, short (189 pages), academic book on garbage, particularly e-waste, food waste, and plastic. Main take-away is we are producing more and more waste and it will take all of us to manage it. For e-waste, that means changing the way things are produced so that they can be repaired (Right to Repair movement) as well as making them safe to recycle in order to reclaim their useful parts. For food waste, that means changing expiration dates to be uniform and meaningful, for one thing. For plastics, that means developing alternatives to single use plastic and government involvement in many things but for example, waste to energy (burning) and recycling. China stopped taking the world’s plastic, paper, and other scrap in August 2018 causing an immediate shock to the whole world. We’ve still not overcome it.
Here are some interesting facts from the book:
There is a city in Japan that requires its citizens to sort trash into 34 different categories.
In 2017, The Guardian reported that a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and barely 10 percent of those are recycles back into bottles.
page 6
Until early 2018, China took in close to half of the plastics thrown into recycling bins in the US and other wealthy nations (along with many other, higher quality types of scrap), to feed its growing manufacturing centers. In 2017, it announced it would effectively halt this practice. It had received too much plastic, paper, and other low-quality scrap, often too contaminated to easily reprocess, and was tired of being seen as the “world’s garbage dump.”…”Operation National Sword,” as this policy is called, sent shockwaves through recycling and waste management industries, and demonstrated how vulnerable the global waste economy, the subject of this book, is.
from page 7
She has an eye-opening chapter on waste pickers, people who live on or near open waste dumps and go through and recycle, sell, re-use what others throw away. She feels these are valuable and important jobs to be respected and protected and to be made safe for those employed. Waste pickers are responsible for recycling 45% of the total waste in Karachi, Pakistan, for example. “In Brazil, informal recycling accounts for high rates of cardboard (80 percent) and aluminum (92 percent) reuse (Dias 2016, p. 377).” In Cairo, the Coptic Christians, the Zabaleen, are waste-pickers and “The system they have put in place over generations is considered one of the world’s most efficient resource recovery systems. They recycle up to 80 percent of what they collect. Yet their relationship with the state turned to confrontation in the 2000s.” She describes their efficient recycling techniques, feeding organic matter to pigs, and training and technology to recycle waste. But Egyptian government changed from being supportive to being combative and tried to do away with the Zabaleen but they remain steadfast: “Cairo-based journalist Peter Hessler noted in 2014 that amid traffic, blackouts, water shortages, three constitutions, and three presidents, their trash was collected every day.”
Regarding e-waste, she says “the average household in the US has 28 devices…” E-waste consists of in order from most to least amounts: Small equipment and lighting (CFLs, toasters, medical devices, toys, microwaves) and large equipment (washing machines, large photocopiers, servers, solar panels); Temperature exchange devices (fridges, air conditioners, freezers); Screens and monitors (laptops, TVs, tablets); and Small IT and telecoms equipment (phones, routers, hard drives).
“The fact that much of what we use — not just electronics — is designed to fail over a distinct timeframe is part of our culture of disposability (Acaroglu 2018).” Talking about “planned, or built-in, obsolescence, when companies design their produces to have an artificially limited lifespan. This is not a new concept – one of the earliest incidences of planned obsolescence at an industrial scale happened in 1924 when representatives from the global lighting industry agreed to a 1,000 hour standard for the lifespan of a light bulb, down from a level that had alarmed the industry and threatened sales.”
Regarding food waste and the lack of standardization in expiration dates: “Walmart’s adoption of a single “best if used by” for its own-brand non-perishable foods could become the industry standard in the US.”
Regarding plastic, “Like JRR Tolkien’s One Ring in his classic trilogy The Lord of the Rings, plastics are permanently destroyed only by incineration at extremely high temperatures (releasing toxic emissions into the atmosphere if they are not captured).
Regarding plastics in the ocean: “Much of the Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of tiny pellets created as plastics degrade and fragment in the ocean. One significant type of microplastics in the ocean is tire dust. Microscopic fibers from laundering artificial fabrics on land are another source of ocean plastics.”
She provide a chart on the recyclability of different types of plastic: #1 (PET) and #2 (HDPE) are the only ones that are easily recyclable. The rest (#3 through #7) are not easily recyclable or not recyclable at all.
One of the factors that caused China to stop importing our plastic and other scraps was a film called “Plastic China” made by Wang Jiuliang.
Regarding plastic bags, Bangladesh banned them in 1998 when bags blocked flood drains for 2 months.
Her suggestions on what individuals can do:
- See what our local governments are doing and prod and support them in building waste management systems.
- Lobby state government to not forbid restrictions on single-use plastic.
- Support right to repair movement.
- Support waste picker associations.
- Support waste management measures at the global level.
Here are some good online resources that she lists:
Waste Dive (www.wastedive.com), The Guardian, Waste 360, Recycling Today, Waste Management World, The Story of Stuff (Annie Leonard’s online animated documentary), TED talk on Ghana “What a scrapyard in Ghana can teach us about innovation.”
The major global waste management companies are as follows in order of most 2016 revenue to least:
Veolia Environnement, France, 48 countries, $27.8 billion, 163,226 employees
Engie/Suez Environnement, France, 70 countries, $22.25 billion, 82,536 employees
Waste Management, USA, USA and Canada, $14.86 billion (2017), 42,300 employees
Republic, USA, USA, $9.4 billion, 33,000 employees
Remondis, Germany, over 30 countries on 4 continents, $9 billion, 31,200 employees
Covanta, USA, USA, Italy, UK, Ireland, $1.7 billion, 3,600 employees