LAWR

WASTE PREVENTION Waste Prevention – the next big challenge While we're all familiar with recycling our recyclables, the next big challenge is waste prevention to conserve valuable resources for future generations. But how do we achieve this? Keith Freegard, director of resource recovery specialist Axion Consulting, offers some thoughts. ver the past fifty years or so there has been a startling change in how we live our lives. A simple, thrifty lifestyle where limited income is spent only on those essential things needed to sustain the family household has largely been replaced by much greater consumption of materials, energy and food. This modern 'well-off' lifestyle of continually rising consumption is placing excessive strain on the planet's ability to deliver these resources sustainably. My attention was drawn to what should be a rising concern for all of us after attending a popular 250-strong Westminster Energy & Environment Forum meeting which focused on the UK Waste Prevention Plan and how it might be implemented. A key issue arising for me from this event, and one which I feel sure will provoke much further debate, is that waste prevention is much more difficult to implement across society than recycling. One senior waste management professional suggested if it had taken 10 or 15 years to get people recycling to a partially successful level, then persuading individuals (and organisations) to start changing their lifestyles and really deal with waste prevention could take an estimated 30 to 50 years. We might contrast that timescale against a recent BP Energy Outlook report warning that global emissions are set to rise by 29% by 2035 as a result of a 41% increase in energy consumption. The annual report predicts that although the rate of growth of emissions declines over the period, emission in 2035 will be nearly double the 1990 level. This growth in emissions is largely attributed to a consistent rise in energy consumption in the emerging economies. Although established economies may fall back to 1990 levels by 2035, emissions are more than triple the 1990 level in these emerging economies. A sobering statistic! Whatever happened to the Kyoto commitment? This stripping of the Earth's resources as a result of our excessive, consumptive lifestyles is graphically presented by the Ecological Footprint 10 Local Authority Waste & Recycling March 2014 O March 2014 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 11 WASTE PREVENTION diagram above, charting our 'progression' to a point in 2050 where we will be consuming three times the sustainable capability of our planet. (See http://www.footprintnetwork. org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/ united_kingdom/) Encouraging people to really change their lifestyle in a manner which makes them less dependent upon excessive consumption of materials, energy and food requires a much more dramatic shift in 'mind-set'. An interesting viewpoint expressed at the Forum was that many people use the weekly 'recycling task' as a kind of 'environmental salve' which, once completed, allows them to continue with their consumptive pattern of eating, travelling and shopping with a clear conscience because they have already 'done their bit' by putting out a few wine bottles in the kerbside waste bin. I suspect most of us can identify with that scenario. Essentially, waste prevention is about challenging every daily activity that uses resources and leads to waste outputs; both in terms of your consumption of physical materials as part of your lifestyle, such as food, clothing, electronic goods, furniture, packaging and also, of course, your use of energy and fuel. Do you really need to fly across Europe for a meeting that could be done via a web-link conference call? Increasingly, we are seeing a worldwide imbalance between the 'haves' and 'those who are catching up' in the developing countries? But convincing Western societies to question and alter decades-old excessive consumptive behaviour for the greater global good sounds like an impossible task. It's a concept that would be difficult to implement – even for the bravest politicians! For years, we have used GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of economic success and an indicator of a country's wealth. However, if we continue with increasing monetary wealth as our measure of Western society's success, then we will soon hit the limits of what the Earth can sustainably provide in terms of materials and resources to support that lifestyle. Maybe it's time to consider a different measure of prosperity, such as the health, well-being and social inclusion of a nation's population rather than one that merely counts the monetary numbers - whether these are pounds, dollars, roubles or rupees - produced by each individual annually. I believe the successful implementation of an effective waste prevention programme across the world's populations (currently seven billion and growing) will only work if we can somehow de-link the concepts of prosperity and 'doing well' from the financial measurement of economic growth. Until we can break the cycle of excessive consumption and start realising that actually 'prosperity' might be more about personal satisfaction, happiness and a socially rewarding lifestyle, rather than dogged pursuit of stuff we don't necessarily need or want, then I fear the pressure on our dwindling natural resources can only worsen. We can all play our part. Yet effective change only happens with strong leadership to set and achieve visionary goals; the question is where will this come from – and crucially, when? I see some evidence of visionary leadership starting to create significant change in Scotland and Wales, but I am afraid I have yet to see this in my home country, England. Axion Consulting is part of the Axion Group that develops and operates innovative resource recovery and processing solutions for recycling waste materials. The Group works with a wide range of clients, from Government agencies and local authorities to companies in diverse commercial sectors, on the practical development of new processing and collection methods to recover value from waste resources. Keith Freegard is director of resource recovery specialist. For more information, contact Axion Consulting on 0161 426 7731 or visit the website - www.axionconsulting.co.uk " Encouraging people to really change their lifestyle in a manner which makes them less dependent upon excessive consumption of materials, energy and food requires a much more dramatic shift in 'mind-set' "

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