1. _ 05.March. 2014
PAGE 08
BRING BACK
BOTTLE
DEPOSITS
PAGE 10
AIMING
AT ZERO
WASTE
PAGE 07
ENERGY
FROM
WASTE
MANAGING WASTE

2. MANAGING WASTE
WASTE IS NO LONGER
JUST A RUBBISH INDUSTRY
Recycling waste into valuable raw material is transforming
the industry’s outlook, as Mike Scott reports
OVERVIEW
ȖȖThe waste management business
has always been an essential but
unglamorous part of the economy,
largely out of sight and out of mind
unless something goes wrong.
But there has been a quiet revolu-tion
going on in the last few years
that has led to a change of outlook
and a new approach.
Companies in the wider economy
have to cope with concerns about
the increasing scarcity and cost
of raw materials. There is tighter
regulation on waste disposal, with
the landfill tax and a range of Euro-pean
directives that demand prod-ucts,
such as cars and consumer
electronics equipment, are fully
recyclable once they reach the end
of their useful life.
There is also a growing concern
about the amount of waste that
companies – and society at large –
are producing.
Every year, “well over one billion
tonnes of waste is generated along
food and agribusiness supply chains
around the world, and almost 2,000
cubic kilometres of water, or more
than 500 million Olympic-size
swimming pools, are required to
produce this wasted food”, accord-ing
to a report by Rabobank Food &
Agribusiness Research.
This combination of pressures
is making companies look more
closely at the waste they pro-duce.
“We have to treat waste as
the raw material for tomorrow’s
products,” says Alan Knight, sus-tainability
director at Business in
the Community.
And the waste industry is having
to change as a result.
Waste is one of the economy’s
“golden sectors”, says Steve Lee,
chief executive of the Chartered
Institute of Waste Management,
because it is one of the industries,
like water and energy, which ties
all the other parts of the econ-omy
together.
“This is the most exciting and
forward-looking time I have ever
seen in the industry,” Mr Lee adds.
“The industry is moving away from
the role of being a coping indus-try,
where our job was to receive
whatever society threw at us and
make it go away. Now the industry
is about resource management
imperatives. We can’t lose sight
of the fact that we still keep the
streets clean, but we are using
more of the waste in a productive
way than ever before.”
Materials, such as rare minerals,
which are used in products rang-ing
from consumer electronics to
wind turbines, are expensive, says
Nicola Jenkins, associate director
at the consultancy Anthesis. “If
you can bring them back into the
system, you are cutting the cost of
your raw materials,” she says.
As a result, the waste sector’s
customers – and competitors – are
changing. “Manufacturers who
need resources might want to get
into this space; mining companies
might want to do the same, espe-cially
when you think that there
is more gold in a New York landfill
site than in a typical gold mine,”
says Dr Knight.
“Waste management companies
can have a very strong role in this
new resource-conscious econ-omy,”
says Dr Forbes McDougall,
corporate solid waste leader, global
product stewardship, at Procter &
Gamble. “But if they do not find
solutions for our waste streams
and we do, we will just take it away
from them.
“They have to become materials
management or resource manage-ment
companies because, if they
don’t, they will lose their competi-tive
advantage. If they come to us
and say they can turn our waste
costs into recycling revenue, we’re
going to listen to them.”
This is what the industry is doing.
“We can see that landfill is coming
to an end. It never used to matter
what came into our facilities. It was
all just waste,” says Richard Kirk-man,
technology director at Veo-lia.
“We’re now focused on what
materials we can recover. We have
had to put in place a huge change
management process. We have had
to up-skill our staff. We didn’t have
the mentality of manufacturers
and that has had to change.”
This shift in mentality has been
helped by changes in design that
mean many products and packag-ing
are easier than ever before to
dismantle in order to recover mate-rials,
while advances in technology
have made it possible to separate
and recycle more difficult products,
such as Tetra Pak drinks cartons.
Rather than just being the recipi-ent
of other sectors’ waste, the
industry is now starting to engage
all the way up the value chain to
engineer hard-to-dispose materi-als
out of the system.
However, many industry figures
say the policy environment in the
UK is uneven. “Scotland, Wales
and increasingly Northern Ireland
are more forward-looking, and see
this as important not just from an
environmental point of view, but
an economic and social point of
view as well,” says Mr Lee. “The
coalition does not see it that way.
The English approach is based
more on compliance because the
government doesn’t want any bur-dens
on the public purse. I think
they are missing a trick.
“This industry is part of the green
growth opportunity for jobs, skills
and resource security.”
Nonetheless, he adds: “It was
not so professionally satisfying to
be the industry that coped with
what people threw at us. It’s much
more fulfilling to be the industry
that helps to manage resources
more efficiently.”
There is more gold in
a New York landfill site
than in a typical gold mine
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MANAGING EDITOR
Peter Archer
COMMISSIONING EDITOR
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PRODUCTION MANAGER
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CONTRIBUTORS
FELICIA JACKSON
Editor at large of Cleantech magazine and author
of Conquering Carbon, she specialises in issues
concerning the transition to a low-carbon economy.
JIM McCLELLAND
Sustainable futurist, speaker, writer and social-media
commentator, his specialisms include built
environment, corporate social responsibility and
ecosystem services.
SARAH MURRAY
Specialist writer on environmental sustainability and
corporate responsibility, she is a regular contributor
to the Financial Times and other leading titles.
TIM PROBERT
Freelance energy journalist, he was formerly deputy
editor of Power Engineering International and an editor
of commodity reports.
MIKE SCOTT
Freelance journalist, specialising in environment and
business, he writes regularly for the Financial Times,
Bloomberg New Energy Finance and 2degrees Network.
Although this publication is funded through advertising and
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DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, INFOGRAPHICS
The Surgery
Colourful waste
doors brighten
up a building site
in South Korea’s
capital Seoul

3. MANAGING WASTE MANAGING WASTE
WHAT GOES AROUND
COMES AROUND… TOP TECHNOLOGIES
Taking a circular, rather than linear, approach to production
and designing products with recycling in mind saves money
– and the Earth, writes Sarah Murray
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
ȖȖBy allowing its customers to
upgrade early, Vodafone is satisfy-ing
demand among mobile phone
consumers for the very latest
devices. Looked at another way,
however, the company is now leas-ing
rather than selling handsets,
giving it a means of retrieving and
recycling equipment.
As the rising cost of materials, as
well as legislation such as Europe’s
Waste Electrical and Electronic
Equipment (WEEE) directive,
increase the pressure to return
materials to the industrial sup-ply
chain, the idea of a circular
economy is gaining momentum.
But some argue that, if the con-cept
is to take hold on a massive
scale, radical shifts in mindset will
be needed and companies must
learn to work more closely with
each other.
Bottle
deposits
Page 08
Certain models provide easy
wins for companies and consum-ers.
For Vodafone customers on a
24-month plan, the new Red Hot
programme gives them access to
the latest devices by allowing them
to upgrade 12 months early.
At the other end of the chain,
companies adopting this type of
model – another is O2 Lease, a
smartphone leasing service – can
sell their phones into secondary
markets or to recycling companies
that extract the valuable materials
from them for reuse.
What is interesting about such
business models, however, is that
companies are not necessarily
promoting the idea of green or
sustainable products. Rather, the
appeal for mobile phone consum-ers
lies in the ability to get hold
of the latest model as soon as it
comes out.
“They don’t tell you you’re leasing
it; they tell you you’ll get access to
the best performance and because
of the business model, they can
MAKING A MARK
Felicia Jackson examines new technologies
in the waste sector and assesses their impact
INNOVATION
Often opportunities are missed because
companies are unaware that other
businesses could find uses for their waste
give you a better deal,” says Jamie
Butterworth, chief executive of
the Ellen MacArthur Foundation,
which is working with companies
such as Cisco, Philips, Renault and
Kingfisher to accelerate the transi-tion
to the circular economy.
Of course, in some ways the idea
of the circular economy is nothing
new. The cradle-to-cradle phi-losophy
of production and manu-facturing
pioneered by William
McDonough and his consultancy,
MBDC, has been around for more
than a decade.
The idea of taking a circular,
rather than a linear, approach
to industrial production, also
referred to as closed loop manu-facturing,
has long been embraced
by companies such as Desso and
Interface. Both flooring companies
have developed innovative recy-cling
technologies.
For Umicore, the Belgium-based
materials technology group, the
shift to the re-use model started
in the 1990s, when the company
transformed its business by exiting
its traditional mining operations to
become a specialty metals refining,
recycling and recovery business.
Developing advanced recycling
technologies was part of this. “And
metals can be recycled infinitely
without losing any of their physi-cal
chemical properties,” explains
Marc Grynberg, the company’s
chief executive.
Umicore can retrieve precious
metals from everything from min-ing
and industrial waste to the
circuit boards from old computers
and mobile phones.
Its transformation was prompted
by the need to address the negative
environmental impact associated
with mining and smelting. “We
started with a problem to fix,” says
Mr Grynberg. “But as we moved in
this direction, we found there were
opportunities that others could
not seize.”
Often these opportunities are
missed because companies are
unaware that other businesses
could find uses for their waste.
It was for this reason that Peter
Laybourn founded International
Synergies. Its National Industrial
Symbiosis Programme (NISP)
uses resource matching work-shops
and other means of sharing
knowledge to help companies
explore whether their energy and
by-products can be turned into
valuable resources that can be
sold to other companies.
In the UK, for example, NISP
helped Denso Manufacturing,
which makes air conditioning
units, engine cooling systems and
automotive components, find
a way to remove the moisture
from the filter cake produced in
its effluent treatment plants so
that it could be used by other-companies.
When crushed, the cake
becomes an active agent in the
absorption of oil and solvent.
This agent can then become a
fuel source and the residual ash
can be used to improve the qual-ity
of soil. Meanwhile, Denso is
saving £30,000 a year.
Intermediaries such as NISP
play a critical part in the circular
economy, argues Mr Laybourn,
by filling information gaps and
acting as a matchmaker for com-panies.
“The key success factors
are bringing people from different
sectors together face-to-face and
having good, clean, accurate data,”
he says.
Mr Grynberg believes companies
must start thinking about resource
management in a different way.
“You need to move from seeing
sustainability as a set of additional
constraints, like having to reduce
your CO2 footprint or water use, to
detecting new opportunities if you
work differently,” he says.
As raw materials continue to rise
in price, these opportunities look
increasingly compelling. “What
we’ve seen in the past ten years is
a significant increase in the price
of energy, metals, and agricultural
and non-agricultural commodi-ties,”
says Mr Butterworth of the
Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
“And that’s really beginning to
drive some action.”
This is why the foundation has
done research to quantify the
financial benefits of the approach.
It reckons that, if companies
work together to build circular
supply chains which dramatically
increase recycling and re-use rates,
$1 trillion a year could be added
to the global economy by 2025.
“Putting a figure on the size of the
prize gains a lot of interest,” says
Mr Butterworth.
PLASMA ARC
ȖȖOne of the most exciting innovations in waste to energy, this
involves a plasma arc which ionises waste to create syngas and
slag. Air Products is constructing a plant on Teesside using
Altern NRG technology; while in Canada, Plasco is operating
a full-scale 50,000-tonne plant transforming municipal waste
into syngas.
The challenge with plasma arc is high parasitic loads, making
it an expensive approach to waste management.
However, at Stopford Projects Dr Ben Herbert says the group
is working on a small plasma demonstration plant with a major
utility and power generator. The new plant is using a new pro-cess
utilising microwave to generate heat, creating a far lower
parasitic load, with lower operating and capital expenditure.
SEWAGE MINING
Sewage waste is a rich source of energy and materials, especially
high in fats. When not properly managed it can mean clogged
sewers – remember the infamous London fatberg – and high-cost
cleaning. Removing this waste to generate new products
could prove the future of waste management.
Ostara has developed a process that takes 80 to 90 per cent
of phosphorus and nitrogen out of waste water, removing con-taminants
and developing a secondary product – an effective
non-water soluble fertiliser. The company is already operating
a plant for Thames Water, as well as five in the United States and
one in Canada.
Isreael’s Applied CleanTech has developed a sewage mining
system, which picks out and recycles useful fibres from raw
urban and industrial waste water, increasing the efficiency of
treatment plants and reducing the amount of unwanted sludge
and the cost of waste water treatment by 20 to 30 per cent.
BIOPLASTICS
The development of bioplastics and other plant-based materials
could have a dramatic impact on industrial reliance on petro-chemicals,
being not just biodegradable but compostable. It
could also address waste by-products in the supply chain.
Biome Bioplastics, for example, develops its products and
materials from potato starch, a by-product of the wallpaper
paste industry. According to director Paul Mines, the company
has already developed a plant-based material for biodegrad-able
coffee pods, offering one of the first sustainable packaging
alternatives in the single-serve market.
“We’ve had traction in high-value, relatively niche sectors, like
coffee pods, disposable razors, even tree protectors for horticul-ture,”
he says.
While the cost of bioplastics is currently two to three times
that of oil-derived plastics, Mr Mines expects to see rapid devel-opments
in industrial biotechnology. He says: “I can see a path
where we can make cheaper bioplastics, probably within three
to four years.”
In conclusion, Allan Barton, Arup’s director and global
leader, resources and waste management, advises: “There
are two basic approaches to take. If the waste is organic, then
cycle as nature intended by burning or composting. If it’s
inorganic, then cycle it around and around the supply chain.
We need to look at the waste stream as a source of materials
to refine, just as petrochemical companies refine oil."
$1trn
A YEAR COULD BE
ADDED TO A CIRCULAR
GLOBAL ECONOMY
BY 2025
100,000
NEW JOBS COULD BE
CREATED FOR THE
NEXT FIVE YEARS
Source: Ellen MacArthur
Foundation
42m
tonnes
OF CO2 EMISSIONS
CUT BY UK COMPANIES
WORKING WITH NISP
48m
tonnes
OF WASTE REDIRECTED
FROM UK LANDFILL
Source: NISP
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4. says Mr Aitchison. To this end, the
role of the Green Investment Bank
(GIB) as a cornerstone investor is
increasingly important, particu-larly
Foresight Group recently forged
a consortium with the GIB to
construct a £47.8-million 10.3MW
recovered wood gasification pro-ject
in Birmingham. The GIB
also invested £20 million in a
49MW waste-to-energy plant on
Teesside in a consortium of SITA
UK, Sembcorp Utilities UK and
Japan’s Itochu.
Mr Aitchison sees AD as a signifi-cant
area for growth. This uses nat-ural
bacteria, which breaks down
waste to produce biogas for power
and heat generation, and slurry
which can be used for fertiliser.
AD accounts for more than
500GWh a year of electricity gen-eration
from 122MW of installed
capacity, a tenfold increase in
only five years. There are two
main segments of AD – source-generated
food waste (SSFW) and
on-farm AD. SSFW units tend to
be the larger of the two, typically
1 to 1.5MW with approximately
30,000 tonnes a year capacity.
On-farm AD typically comprises
sub-500kW units.
The planning process for AD is
considerably less controversial
than larger waste management
incinerators because they are
smaller, less intrusive facilities and
are usually designed to manage
locally sourced waste. Mr Aitch-ison
has an eye on a possible move
to ban food to landfill, as proposed
by the Labour Party should they
be successful at the 2015 general
election, as giving a big boost to the
AD sector.
Figures from the Waste &
Resources Action Programme
estimate 7.3 million tonnes of
food waste is produced by UK
households each year. “There is a
progression to incentivising this,”
says Mr Aitchison. “A landfill ban
on food waste, which some peo-ple
have said would be difficult
to police, would undoubtedly be
a benefit.”
There are some caveats. The UK
as a whole is poor at collecting
waste material, with more than
100 different ways used to collect
waste, be it bag, box or bin. Indeed,
most local authorities do not col-lect
food waste separately.
Furthermore, the Department
of Energy & Climate Change
(DECC) last month confirmed
feed-in tariffs for AD would be
cut by 20 per cent, which the
Renewable Energy Association
fears will make some sub-500kW
projects uneconomic.
If the Labour Party gets in in
2015 and keeps its pledge to ban
food waste from landfill, however,
AD is likely to be back in vogue.
07
MANAGING WASTE
ENERGY FROM WASTE IS
GENERATING INTEREST
Harnessing energy from waste enables companies to
cut costs as well as carbon emissions, but there is potential
for greater progress, as Tim Probert discovers
ENERGY
ȖȖEvery year the average per-son
in the UK generates 500kg of
waste. Of this, half usually ends up
in landfill. Driven by the EU direc-tives
on waste, for which the UK
must reduce landfilling to 35 per
cent of biodegradable municipal
waste on 1995 levels by 2020, Brit-ain
is making strides to turn waste
into energy and wealth.
Energy from waste (EfW) is not
particularly new. Landfill gas has
been used for decades and gener-ates
more than 5,000GWh a year
of electricity from over 1GW of
installed capacity.
Similarly, the large, typically
250,000 tonnes a year waste-to-energy
plants burning unsorted,
municipal solid waste (MSW),
popularly known as incinerators,
generate around 2,300GWh a year
from approximately 600MW of
installed capacity.
The landfill tax introduced in
1996, which saw councils charge
a tax of £8 a tonne of material
disposed in landfill, is perhaps
the single most effective piece of
legislation to incentivise efficient
waste management practice. It
has transformed the perception of
waste to that of being a resource. A
landfill tax escalator has seen the
level steadily rise to £80 a tonne,
with Chancellor George Osborne
putting a floor under this figure
until 2020.
Moreover, almost all EfW pro-jects
are eligible for three main
revenue streams. These are the
gate fee paid for processing waste
instead of paying the landfill tax;
the sale of the produced electricity;
and one of two incentive regimes –
renewable obligation certificates
and feed-in tariffs.
Although so far not widely
deployed, the Renewable Heat
Incentive offers an additional
inducement primarily for CHP
(combined heat and power) anaer-obic
digestion (AD) plants. Non-
CHP incinerators do not qualify
for support.
Local opposition to thermal
treatment technologies or incin-erators
can be fierce. Concerns
are often raised about the health
implications and the wider envi-ronmental
impacts of burning
waste. However, government and
the industry argue the evidence
shows the thermal treatment
of waste is safe, while plants
using cleaner technologies, such
as advanced gasification and
pyrolysis systems, which create
synthetic gas and reduce air pol-lution,
are increasingly common.
But there are fears market
saturation has created overcapac-ity
and undersupply of energy
feedstock, with some councils
locked into punitive contracts
to provide waste to incinerators
instead of recycling. Indeed, fears
about potential white elephants
have forced the Department
for Environment, Food & Rural
Affairs to withdraw hundreds of
millions in funding to build new
incinerators.
According to Nigel Aitchison,
partner and co-head of environ-mental
at investment management
firm Foresight Group, talk about
overcapacity is misplaced. He says:
“When people talk about over-capacity
they tend to talk about
municipal waste, not the full waste
market including commercial and
industrial (C&I) waste produced
by manufacturers, industry, hotels,
restaurants and so on. In dry recy-clables,
there may be overcapacity
and a number of facilities have
closed, but there haven't been any
closures of EfW plants.”
The trouble is nobody is quite
sure how much waste there is
available or will be in future. It is
widely accepted that the waste
datasets are not fit for purpose.
Waste management consultancy
Ricardo-ASA assumes that by
2020, there will be 53 million
tonnes of MSW, C&I, and con-struction
and demolition waste
in need of treatment at thermal,
organic and sorting facilities. On
current capacity projections, how-ever,
this is 15 million tonnes more
than both the operational facilities
and known infrastructure likely to
be delivered by 2020.
The absence of reliable waste
data is a major hindrance to inves-tors;
this applies to both the quan-tity
of waste and the detailed infor-mation
about its composition. The
lack of sound data using a common
methodology makes putting a busi-ness
case together challenging and
one of the core reasons for limited
financing for new infrastructure.
“What we’ve seen is a number of
EfW projects that haven’t gone for-ward,
not because they haven’t got
the land or planning permission,
but because they didn’t adequately
structure the project in a way
which meant it was investable,”
NATIONAL RECYCLING STUDY
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for larger EfW projects.
599mw
OF UK ENERGY FROM WASTE
GENERATION CAPACITY
Source: DECC
102.7m
tonnes
OF UK WASTE REQUIRING
TREATMENT IN 2013
Source: Ricardo-ASA
7.3m
tonnes
OF FOOD WASTE
PRODUCED BY UK
HOUSEHOLDS EACH YEAR
Source: Waste & Resources
Action Programme
The landfill tax has transformed
the perception of waste to that
of being a resource
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An energy
from waste
incinerator
on Teesside
Achieving a circular economy
is the responsibility of us all
As one of the UK’s leading recycling and resource management companies,
SITA UK has a large role to play in the UK’s journey towards a “circular
economy”, where all discarded resources are collected, processed and
returned back to the manufacturing process, so that the cycle can start again
are always working to find new ways
to make use of materials that would
otherwise be landfilled and to improve
the proportion of collected materials
that can be recycled. For example,
SITA UK is currently commission-ing
the UK’s first end-of-life plastics
facility, which converts plastics that
cannot be recycled, such as micro-wave
meal film lids, into diesel fuel.
“But improving recycling rates and
diverting as much material from land-fill
as possible requires the buy-in of
everyone involved in the lifecycle of
a product, from designer, through to
manufacturer, retailer and consumer.”
Mr Hayward-Higham points out
that collecting materials, which
have been discarded, and feeding
them back into the manufacturing
cycle is not the fi rst step towards a
circular economy.
“Design is one of the major cul-prits
of waste and we need to think
about how we can design products
for their whole lifecycle,” he says.
“By carefully considering design
of products and packaging, we can
minimise the amount of raw materi-als
that enter the circular economy
in the fi rst place, ensure they have
a long lifespan before they are dis-carded
and, fi nally, ensure they are
easy to extract resources from to
return to the manufacturing pro-cess
at the end of their life.
“For example, products that are
designed to be upgraded or reman-ufactured
would allow for them to
be returned, renewed, restyled and
resold as an improved version of the
original, which is the reason most
of us ‘upgrade’. This already occurs
in products, such as photocopiers,
where the ‘chassis’ might be used
a number of times, but each time it
looks new, feels new, has new func-tions
and still does the job.”
In fact, Mr Hayward-Higham says
there are even wider, more funda-mental,
cultural changes society can
make as a whole to minimise waste.
“If you stand back and take a look
at the reasons why materials have
been discarded, you begin to think
about changes we could make to
the way we live our lives, which
opens a huge number of opportu-nities,”
he says. “For example, we
could move towards a model where
products are replaced by services,
known as ‘servitisation’.
SITA UK, a subsidiary of SUEZ ENVI-RONNEMENT,
is a recycling and
resource management company,
which serves more than 12 mil-lion
people and handles 8.5 million
tonnes of domestic, commercial
and industrial waste each year. The
company provides services for over
42,000 public and private-sector
customers, and operates a network
of facilities, including recycling,
composting, biomass production,
waste collection, energy-from-waste
plants and landfi ll sites.
Although it might seem counter-intuitive,
the ultimate goal of SITA
UK is to operate in a world with no
more waste, where best use is made
of all discarded materials by feed-ing
them back into the cycle of pro-duction
and consumption, instead of
losing them forever to landfi ll.
SITA UK’s technical development
director Stuart Hayward-Higham
explains why this isn’t a case of “tur-keys
voting for Christmas” and why
waste management companies only
play a small, if not important, part in
achieving a more sustainable model
of consumption.
“The word ‘waste’ no longer means
that something is lost forever, it only
means that the producer of the waste
no longer has a need for it. Oth-ers
may be able to use it, or the raw
resources, and that’s the job of busi-nesses
like ours – to find a sustain-able
use or users for the materials
others throw away,” he says.
“Resource management companies
“For instance, householders buy
drills to make holes, but they don’t
necessarily need to buy a drill to
make a hole; they just need access
to one, perhaps through a short-term
rental. This means that the
drills can be managed through the
hirer, and their repair and mainte-nance
can be conducted in an eco-nomical
way. The result is that they
are used for longer and not thrown
away by the householder when a
part breaks or wears out.”
For many, the circular econ-omy
is a slightly abstract con-cept,
aand it is difficult for organ-isations
and individuals to know
what they can do to make a differ-ence.
Increasingly, SITA UK is help-ing
customers to make the shift to
a circular and sustainable model
by providing practical solutions.
For more information about SITA UK
and its services, visit www.sita.co.uk
Design is one of the major culprits
of waste and we need to think
about how we can design products
for their whole lifecycle
Stuart Hayward-Higham, technical
development director, SITA UK, is
responsible for technical and policy
innovation, and has worked in the
recycling and waste industry for
almost 30 years
In partnership with SITA UK,
Keep Britain Tidy has begun a
national study to fi nd new ways of
improving recycling rates in Eng-land’s
major cities.
Recycling in England is fl at-lining
and, while some areas of the country
are reaching recycling rates near-ing
70 per cent, other areas are only
achieving 15 to 20 per cent.
Among those authorities with the
lowest recycling rates, many have
densely populated urban areas,
which pose a signifi cant challenge to
eˆ ective recycling.
England is also facing the danger
that it won’t achieve its EU 2020
recycling target of 50 per cent.
However, despite this, the govern-ment
has withdrawn funding and
focus from sustainable resource use,
placing its future in the hands of the
waste management industry.
Keep Britain Tidy is looking for
new and innovative ways to boost
recycling rates in England’s cities by
asking members of the public to come
up with real-world solutions with the
help of waste industry experts.
Volunteers from London and Man-chester,
none of whom have any prior
knowledge of the waste and recycling
industry, are working alongside indus-try
experts to find practical ways to
encourage people to recycle more.
The solutions devised by these
groups will then be tested by a wider
independent public poll of more than
1,000 people, and the outcomes of
both studies will be presented in a
report and short fi lm in June.
Keep Britain Tidy’s campaigns
and communications director Andy
Walker says: “Tackling waste is
something in which the public has
a big role to play, but all too often
debates about recycling do not
include ordinary people.
“These sessions are an opportunity
for the man, or woman, on the street
to have their say on an important
issue that aˆ ects us all.”

5. MANAGING WASTE MANAGING WASTE
TIME FOR RETURN
OF OLD-FASHIONED
BOTTLE DEPOSITS
£££ £££ £££
DENMARK
NETHERLANDS
8 raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur raconteur.net twitter: @raconteur 09
9
One of the most effective means of diverting useful
resources from waste is the introduction of a bottle
deposit scheme, writes Felicia Jackson
BOTTLE DEPOSITS
ȖȖRecycling glass can save 80 per
cent of raw materials mined and,
with recycled aluminium saving
95 per cent of the energy it takes to
make new aluminium, the impact
in terms of energy costs and CO2
emissions can be considerable.
Sweden offers a world-leading
example of how to deal with
waste from drinks bottles and
cans. Operated by Returpack,
a recycling company co-owned
by the drinks companies and
brewers in Sweden, the Swed-ish
deposit return scheme sees a
small deposit added to the cost
of drinks which is refunded when
the container is returned.
Pelle Hjalmarsson, chief executive
of Returpack, says a key element of
the system is that it was introduced
and managed by the different stake-holders
working together. “Eve-rybody
had a very high interest in
creating a well-functioning deposit
system,” he says.
Implementation of the scheme
has resulted in recycling rates of
more than 90 per cent of its drinks
containers. These are then made
into new containers or, in the case
of some of the plastic bottles, into
clothing, bags and other goods.
There can be difficulties in the
deployment of such a scheme,
especially if there is push-back
from retailers or producers. Clearly
the ability to make manufacturers,
fillers, packers and retailers work
together has a critical role to play.
In Britain, disagreements among
the stakeholders about where
the on-cost of recovery should be
placed resulted in a compromise in
UK packaging legislation.
The legislation sets percentage
targets for the recovery of card-board,
glass, plastic and aluminium,
and companies within the supply
chain need to report a number of
certificates or producer responsi-bility
notes (PRNs) to regulators
representing each year’s targets.
This shares the responsibility
for recycling throughout the sup-ply
chain, rather than encouraging
co-operation, while at the end
of the chain waste management
companies had no specific obli-gation
for recycling. Effectively
it created a market for PRNs
which, combined with rising
landfill tax, meant a greater push
towards recycling, but not a holis-tic
approach to reclamation.
There are three elements to the
value of a bottle deposit scheme:
the value of the materials retrieved
themselves; fees to industry; and
the value of unredeemed deposits.
Allan Barton, Arup’s director and
global leader, resources and waste
management, says: “The beauty of
reward schemes is that some people
will act, some people won’t and that
fraction will fund the programme.”
Mr Hjalmarsson admits that one
of the biggest challenges can be
consumer behaviour, especially
outside the home. But, he says
of the Swedes: “It’s in our blood
to make deposits.” In the UK, as
Will Griffiths of the Carbon Trust
points out: “The challenge is con-sumer
engagement and incentivis-ing
them sufficiently.”
In Europe alone, more than
100 million people live in coun-
Litter rates would fall, our
streets would be cleaner
and recycling would
increase dramatically
tries with bottle deposit schemes,
including Norway, Denmark, Fin-land
and Estonia. Rauno Raul,
chief executive of the Estonian
Deposit System, says: “The advan-tage
of a deposit system, compared
to other alternative or parallel sys-tems,
is the fact that the monetary
incentive – the deposit sum – guar-antees
very high collection rates.
Deposit systems usually can collect
from 80 to 96 per cent of input.”
The impact of such a scheme
can move far beyond simply man-aging
part of the waste stream.
A 2010 report by Eunomia, for
the Campaign to Protect Rural
England (CPRE), demonstrated
that a drink container deposit
refund scheme (DRS) would
greatly reduce litter and increase
recycling rates. Running costs of
around 0.8p per container would
be supported by revenue from
unclaimed deposits.
Hopes for a UK DRS were hit
in 2011 when the government’s
review of waste policy identified
the high cost of running such a
scheme as a barrier to success. The
Industry Council for Research on
Packaging and the Environment
argued that encouraging the use of
existing recycling process through
kerbside collection would be bet-ter
value for money. However, this
ignores the importance of behav-iour
outside the home.
Dominic Hogg, director of Euno-mia,
says: “At the moment, council
tax payers meet the costs of recy-cling,
clean-up of litter and land-
RECYCLING WASTE BOTTLES INTO ASSETS
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fill, irrespective of their purchases.
But under a drinks container
deposit refund scheme, the costs
of dealing with beverage packag-ing
would be met by industry and
by those who forego their right to
the refund of their deposit. Litter
rates would fall, our streets would
be cleaner and recycling would
increase dramatically.”
Following the victory of the Scot-tish
National Party (SNP) north of
the border in 2013, Zero Waste Scot-land
ran a pilot scheme, which the
group is now analysing to see what
it would take to expand the project.
Iain Gulland, Zero Waste Scot-land’s
director, says the SNP
wanted to increase recycling rates,
as well as the quality of recyclate,
and to promote anti-litter cam-paigning.
The pilot project con-sisted
of ten sites, eight of which
were reverse vending and two
deposit return. He says that, while
the report on the pilot will not
be out until later this year, all the
schemes were used and recycling
rates increased.
“Our objective was to look at
the impacts and at public accept-ance,”
he says. “While there were
challenges, the pilot showed that
rewarding people does work under
certain circumstances.”
One of the big unknowns in the
Eunomia study for CPRE was a
monetary value for the disamenity
or adverse impact of litter. A 2013
Eunomia study for Zero Waste
Scotland on the indirect costs of
litter showed that the disamenity
value is higher than had previously
been thought and so adds weight to
the case for deposit systems.
As part of this work, Eunomia
explored the links between litter
and crime, and the effects of litter
on mental wellbeing. Focusing
solely on crime, the annual costs
attributable to litter, for Scotland,
were identified as being up to
£22.5 million. For mental health
and wellbeing, the study estimated
attributable costs for Scotland to
be £53 million.
While the recycling system in the
UK has worked reasonably well,
the growing focus on recovering
resources has meant that materi-als
recovery is happening at many
different stages and it can be dif-ficult
when one particular stream
is removed.
Peter Jones, director at Ecolat-eral,
says: “The system is work-ing,
but it’s crying out for reform.
If you’re in the waste industry,
it’s no longer economic to put
waste in landfill, so the remain-ing
options are composting or
anaerobic digestion, or thermo-chemical
treatment.”
Mr Barton, at Arup, adds: “We
need an integrated waste strategy
that will work on an international
scale.” What this means is that
schemes such as Sweden’s bot-tle
deposit approach could have
an impact through reducing one
waste stream and encouraging
the exploitation of the remain-ing
streams with a range of new
technologies.
Estonia’s Mr Raul concludes:
“The initiative has to come from
the government side. That was the
case in Estonia when the packag-ing
and packaging excise law was
introduced in 2004. It is very
unlikely that producers or retailers
would do something really serious
in terms of recycling on their own.
The state has to introduce and
enforce a concrete framework of
rules to get real results.”
BEVERAGE DEPOSIT MODEL
EUROPEAN BOTTLE DEPOSIT SCHEMES
SOURCE: ZERO WASTE EUROPE
SOURCE: PETCORE EUROPE SOURCE: PLASTICS RECYCLING EXPO
SOURCE: RACONTEUR/EUNOMIA
WHOLESALERS AND
DISTRIBUTION CENTRES STORE
POINT OF COLLECTION
CENTRAL SYSTEM
(FINANCIAL CONTROL)
BEVERAGE INDUSTRY
CONSUMER
MATERIAL FLOW DEPOSIT PAYMENT FLOW
GERMANY
NORWAY
SWEDEN
FINLAND
ESTONIA
CROATIA
COUNTRIES/REGIONS WITH AN
INSTALLED DEPOSIT SYSTEM FOR
ONE-WAY CONTAINERS
COUNTRIES/REGIONS THAT ARE IN THE
PROCESS OF EVALUATING A DEPOSIT
SYSTEM FOR ONE-WAY CONTAINERS
PACKAGING INDUSTRY
Aluminum and plastic are also
the most energy intensive of
the three leading container
types, each accounting for
It is estimated that every
UK household uses
In the decade from 2001
to 2010, the value of
wasted beverage container
materials exceeded
plastic bottles each year
$22bn 47%
of the total energy lost
when containers are
landfilled or burnt
RECYCLERS
(PROCESSING FACILITY)
500

6. MANAGING WASTE MANAGING WASTE
ZEROING IN ON
WASTE-FREE LIVING
With the government under pressure to hit a 70 per cent recycling
target by 2020, more businesses must embrace the environmental –
and economic – case for zero waste, writes Mike Scott
ZERO WASTE
ȖȖSince the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution, wherever goods have
been made, they have been accom-panied
by the creation of waste. “It
was just seen as the cost of doing
business,” says Forbes McDougall,
corporate solid waste leader in the
global product stewardship team
at Procter & Gamble (P&G).
But today, a growing number of
companies, including P&G and
other global giants such as car-maker
GM, are working to ensure
that their facilities do not send
any waste to landfill.
P&G, which makes everything
from toothpaste and shampoo to
nappies and pet food, has already
made 54 of its 160 sites around
the world zero waste and plans to
have completed the process at 70
plants by the end of the year.
The rationale is quite simple, Dr
McDougall explains: “Everything
you divert from landfill is avoided
cost.” With landfill tax soon to
hit £80 a tonne, those costs are
considerable. P&G believes it has
saved more than $1 billion over
the last five years by reducing
waste. “You have already paid for
these materials up front. If you
don’t recycle it, you have to pay
again to dispose of it,” he adds.
Businesses are realising that
“they have to be part of a move
from a linear economy to a circu-lar
economy,” says Alan Knight,
sustainability director at Busi-ness
in the Community. “There
is a change in the business model
from disposing of waste in landfills
to a focus on resource recovery.
“Dumping stuff that is worth
money on a planet that is running
out of resources does not add up –
we have to be smarter in the way
we run society,” Dr Knight adds.
The move towards zero-waste
economies has been driven in part
by tougher regulation, such as
the landfill tax and EU directives
requiring the recycling of cars and
electronic equipment, helped by a
growing interest in sustainability
from consumers. Companies
are also more concerned about
the increasing scarcity of many
resources, their cost and the abil-ity
to secure supplies, which these
days come from all over the globe,
in the face of challenges such as
extreme weather events.
“Zero waste is about the econ-omy,
it’s about jobs, it’s about sav-ings
to industry – it’s not just an
environmental thing,” says Iain
Gulland, director of Zero Waste
Scotland, which is charged with
making Scotland a zero-waste
economy by 2025. The move will
create about 12,000 new green
jobs in the country, he adds.
A zero-waste approach can cut
upstream costs and increase rev-enues
by locking customers into
your service, says David Bent,
head of sustainable business
at Forum for the Future. “For
example, leasing out uniforms
instead of selling them would
save money for the consumer
and vast amounts of resources.
Businesses need to find their
Dumping stuff that is worth money on a planet that is
running out of resources does not add up – we have to
be smarter in the way we run society
Don’t rubbish the power of waste
Instead of resorting to landfill, more waste should be
used to power UK energy plants, says Biffa
The Climate Change Act 2008 estab-lished
a target for the UK to reduce
its carbon emissions by at least 80
per cent of 1990 levels by 2050 . It’s
a challenging target and one that
requires all sectors, including the
waste industry, to reduce green-house
gas emissions.
Reducing methane from landfill
sites is one of the waste sector’s big-gest
challenges in that regard. And
with landfill tax becoming evermore
expensive – from April it increases
from £72 to £80 per tonne – the
industry is seeking different treat-ment
options.
One alternative is to use more of this
active waste – the waste that remains
after the recycling fraction has been
taken out – as a feedstock for energy
plants. Refuse-derived fuel (RDF), as
it is known, can be used in a variety
of treatment plants, including energy
from waste (EFW), mechanical bio-logical
treatment, anaerobic digestion
and increasingly gasification, to gen-erate
electricity and heat.
England and Wales currently use
about 5-6m tonnes of waste mate-rials
for this purpose, but in the UK
19m tonnes is still landfilled, while
just 1.5m tonnes (2013) is processed
into RDF and exported to Europe
where it is used as fuel in Dutch and
Scandinavian energy plants.
So why are England and Wales
only using a fraction of this valuable
low-carbon feedstock, and land-filling
and exporting the rest? The
problem is one of capacity. Here in
the UK there are simply not enough
plants to deal with the amount of
waste produced.
The reason for this, according to
Biffa Waste Services’ chief execu-tive
Ian Wakelin, is the RDF mar-ket’s
immaturity – everything from
the lack of EFW infrastructure and
planning delays for new plants, to
a lack of confidence in the business
case and hard-to-access finance for
new plants.
“The economic case for both RDF
production and energy production is
unproven or at least in its infancy in
the UK,” he says. “The challenge is
then to secure finance for any facility
either producing or using RDF.”
Planning delays don’t help,
according to Jacob Hayler, an econ-omist
at the Environmental Ser-vices
Association.
“The problem is one of uncer-tainty.
Developers have no idea how
long it’s going to take to get plants
built and any delay adds tremen-dously
to costs,” he says.
economically and in terms of emis-sions
reduction, could be substantial
if these challenges within the energy-from-
waste sector can be overcome.
“There is undoubtedly a strong
commercial opportunity for RDF
but, as ever in the waste industry,
one that’s littered with challenges,”
says Biffa’s Mr Wakelin. “It will be
interesting to see who wins.”
References
1 https://www.gov.uk/government/poli-cies/
reducing-the-uk-s-greenhouse-gas-
emissions-by-80-by-2050
2 See link to incineration spreadsheet:
http://www.environment-agency.gov.
uk/research/library/data/150326.aspx)
3 (See Landfill Tax Bulletin: https://
www.uktradeinfo.com/statistics/
pages/taxanddutybulletins.aspx)
4 Environment Agency
5 From interview with Hayler from the ESA
“It’s a chicken-and-egg situation.
We are exporting RDF because we
don’t have the capacity to use it in this
country, but we can’t build a busi-ness
case for using it here because
we’re currently exporting it.”
His solution to unlocking this
conundrum is for the government
to incentivise the use of heat gen-erated
by energy from waste more
than it currently does. Energy from
waste plants operate at about 20-30
per cent efficiency if they only gen-erate
electricity; if they use the
heat generated as well, that rises to
about 60-70 per cent .
This makes them more economi-cally
viable and able to compete
with European energy-from-waste
plants, which are often subsidised by
governments and can thus charge a
lower fee than their UK counterparts
for taking RDF waste, ensuring a
regular feedstock supply.
Within the increasingly competitive
waste industry, the rewards, both
Refuse-derived fuel can be used
in a variety of treatment plants
Technological developments
mean that metals can be extracted
from street sweepings and plastics
from sewage sludge, which can
also generate heat and electricity.
“Ultimately, we’re going to
need an economy where we
don’t burden the natural world
with waste,” says Forum for the
Future’s Mr Bent. “We don’t need
every company to be zero waste;
CASE STUDY
we just need each company to
be able to sell its ‘waste’ as ‘food’
to another company – an open-loop
to experiment and invest in new
business models where each link
round the chain benefits from
passing on stuff to the next user,
so that nothing goes to waste.”
NOSE TO TAIL
IN PARK LANE
A commitment to eliminat-ing
waste is not necessarily
what you would expect
from a glitzy hotel – but
that is what is happening
at the Lancaster London
on Park Lane, one of the
capital’s most glamorous
addresses.
“We understand that as a
hotel and food business,
we have a massive carbon
footprint,” says Eibhear
Coyle, executive assistant
manager for operations.
“We wanted to reduce
our impact.”
The impetus came about
when the hotel kitchens
underwent a refit. “It was
a massive investment
and we wanted to make it
sustainable for the next
25 years,” Mr Coyle adds.
“One of the first things I did
was to remove the waste
compactors because they
made it harder to change
the culture among the
staff. It is difficult to change
the culture because zero
waste means more work
for staff, but people have
bought into it.”
One of the biggest con-tributors
to the hotel’s
waste was bottled water,
economy. Companies need
which used to result in
50,000 plastic bottles being
thrown away every year.
Now the hotel filters and
bottles its own water in
reusable bottles.
In addition, Lancaster
London asked its suppli-ers
either to deliver food
in crates that can then be
reused or to decant sup-plies
in the loading bay to
reduce packaging waste.
Another driver was a
desire to achieve a rating
from the Sustainable
Restaurant Association.
Front of house, the hotel’s
restaurants and banquet-ing
facilities adopted a
“nose-to-tail” approach
that reduces food waste
by using “forgotten” cuts
of meat that are often
neglected.
Not only did this reduce
costs and the carbon foot-print
of the dining facilities,
but it has also become a
selling point, particularly
on the banqueting side.
“The majority of our cus-tomers
are big corpora-tions
that have their own
corporate social respon-sibility
policies and this
aligns with their values.”
place in an economy which tries
to squeeze the most value out of
each atom.”
The other aspect of zero waste
is to rethink how products are
designed and produced so they
retain some value once they come
to the end of their primary use,
says Alban Foster, a director at
SLR Consulting. “Zero-waste
thinking demands that a business
continually considers better ways
of managing any materials that
have the potential to be ‘waste’,”
he says.
Waste
water
Page 15
This can range from recycling
aluminium drinks cans so they
can be used to make new cans, to
turning waste from one produc-tion
process into a totally new
product. P&G, for example, is
turning toothpaste waste into
jewellery cleaner, while UK com-pany
Knowaste recycles nappies,
turning them into plastic that
goes into products from bike
helmets to park benches and even
flood defences. The process also
produces fibre that is used for eve-rything
from cardboard packaging
to bricks.
“Nappies never rot. They would
sit in landfill for at least 500
years,” says Paul Richardson,
business development director at
the company, which is hoping to
build five to ten processing plants
around the country that would be
capable of dealing with some 40
per cent of the 1.1 million tonnes of
nappies and hygiene products cur-rently
sent to landfill every year.
Even waste management com-panies,
which you would think
is the one sector of the economy
that would not embrace the zero-waste
concept, are getting in on
the act. “Our focus has changed
from getting waste out of cities
and into landfill to what materials
we can find that have value,” says
Richard Kirkman, technology
director at Veolia.
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7. MANAGING WASTE MANAGING WASTE
2 Time for change
The waste and business sectors need to
work together in new ways if they want to
exploit the commercial opportunities within
the “circular economy”, says Paul Cox,
managing director of Reconomy
70%
of Reconomy's core business is
providing waste solutions to the
construction sector
1,500
unwanted beds from Travelodge have
been refurbished for use by charities
such as the British Heart Foundation
65%
of the recycled beds were suitable
for reuse, generating £57,000 for the
British Heart Foundation
the exception. Until then, we and oth-ers
are moving into prime position to
take advantage of the many business
opportunities afforded by what we
hope will be the growing take-up of
circular economy principles.
With a number of notable excep-tions,
the vast majority of global
production is deeply unsustainable.
It’s a “take-make-dispose” linear
system that generates staggering
amounts of waste and causes sub-stantial
environmental damage.
Increasingly, businesses are look-ing
at alternatives, one of which is
the “circular economy”. This takes
its inspiration from nature – that
human systems should work like
organisms, processing biologi-cal
and technical inputs, which can
be fed back into the process, and
reused again and again. Zero waste
is a key component of this process.
It’s not just a theory. There are
businesses out there applying cir-cular
economy principles, but they
tend to be large corporates rather
than smaller companies. If closed
loop is achievable, why is it not more
widespread throughout the busi-ness
community?
Part of the problem is the frag-mented
nature of the waste sector.
This makes it hard for companies to
offer national solutions to the larg-est
waste producing sectors in the
UK, including construction, which
comprises more than 70 per cent of
Reconomy’s core business.
Progress towards circular econ-omy
business models is happening,
but a more collaborative approach
between partners is required to
make it more commonplace.
There is a lack of understanding,
skills and knowledge of how com-panies
can work together to achieve
this aim. Businesses can overcome
this by outsourcing their recycling
and waste operations to a national
provider which uses local supply
networks. This reduces companies’
operational burden, allowing them
to focus on waste reduction, re-use
and minimisation strategies.
Reconomy’s collaborat ive
approach enables us to come up
with innovative ways to work with
clients. As part of our recent part-nership
with Travelodge, to date
we have collected about 1,500
unwanted beds from the hotel chain
and refurbished half of them for use
by charities, such as British Heart
Foundation. Not zero waste, but a
step in the right direction.
Zero waste was, however, a condi-tion
of Reconomy’s waste manage-ment
work at the Olympic Aquatic
Centre. We sent all waste that
couldn’t be recycled to Northumber-land
Wharf, east London, from where
it was transported by barge along
the Thames to a refuse-derived fuel
facility. The constraints of the Olym-pic
Park site and limited waste trans-port
options meant we had to come
up with a creative solution.
Infrastructure challenges aside,
the business case for the circu-lar
economy is clear – low or no
waste means lower landfill costs.
But judging by the few examples
out there, this doesn’t seem to be
enough of a driver. In the end, it’s the
responsibility of both clients and the
waste sector to come up with inno-vative
ways to reduce waste.
To move towards a circular econ-omy,
organisations need to break
away from the traditional ways
of doing things and explore new
cross-sector partnerships with dif-ferent
clients.
Waste operators should be pro-viding
solutions for companies that
bridge the skills and knowledge
gap within the sector, and by work-ing
together, aim to reduce waste as
much as possible.
If this happens, it’s likely that compa-nies
such as Reconomy will become
the rule rather than, as they are now,
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
Increasingly,
businesses
are looking at
alternatives, one of
which is the
‘circular economy’
LIVING IN
A MATERIAL
E-WORLD
Environmental, cost and supply pressures are
bringing about a shift in design priorities to avoid
expensive waste of materials, notably in the
electronics sector, as Jim McClelland reports
DESIGNING OUT WASTE
ȖȖGold, silver and platinum will
be among precious metals worth
£1.5 billion purchased unwittingly
in the UK between now and 2020.
This hoard of hidden treasure will
be scattered throughout ten mil-lion
tonnes of electronic products
bought by organisations, compa-nies
and private individuals alike.
Electronic, digital and mobile
technologies are big business.
The marketplace is competitive,
evolving constantly and rapidly.
Sales are strong, not least because
products date and break.
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As a result, product and mate-rial
recovery, recycling and reuse
is also an area of rising concern
– and opportunity. Waste electri-cal
and electronic equipment
(WEEE) is now the fastest growing
waste stream worldwide, with an
estimated two million tonnes dis-carded
in the UK every year.
In response, new European
Union WEEE regulations com-ing
into force this year seek to
encourage producers to consider
the environment at disposal and
end of life, designing out waste and
adopting cradle-to-cradle (C2C)
responsibility for products.
What will be the effect of these
legislative changes? The new obli-gations
carry potential implica-tions
for all stakeholders and life-cycle
stages, from design, though
manufacture, to consumption
and finally recovery. How will the
market react?
“The majority of rethinking of
e-waste is driven by clear and con-sistent
regulatory requirements,
primarily emanating from the
European Commission,” explains
Will Schreiber, co-author of the
WRAP report Reducing the envi-ronmental
and cost impacts of
electrical products, and associate
director at Best Foot Forward.
“Whether televisions or washing
machines, the overall trend in the
electrical sector has been to make
products less repairable and have
shorter lifetimes,” he says. “The
changes that we see in response to
legislation, however, are starting to
have an effect on the business mod-els
some companies are developing
by reducing hazardous substances,
offering longer warranty periods or
providing buy-back options.”
This emerging trend will ask
questions of product designers, a
community that has been relatively
slow to respond to the waste issue
creeping up the corporate and
regulatory agenda, according to
designer and head of sustainability
at Seymourpowell Chris Sherwin.
“I don’t think designers have
considered the waste and disposal
stages of products anywhere near
as much as they should,” he says.
“Most of what we do in design
processes is to become the cham-pion
of the consumer experience.
The main problem with that is it
misses off the front and especially
the back-end aspects. We need a
broader, more holistic approach.”
The conditions for change are
gradually becoming manifest in
electronics markets, with a com-bination
of contributory factors in
evidence, he says. “It is no secret
that carbon/energy has been the
main driver for the electronics
sector, but companies are turning
more to waste and resource con-sumption,
driven by concepts like
C2C, the circular economy, rising
materials costs, better recycling
and recovery infrastructure. It
seems more of a priority in design
now.”
Momentum in waste markets
still seems more push than pull
though, as Mr Schreiber describes
the dynamic. “Unlike energy con-sumption,
which has direct con-sumer
benefits and therefore
demand, material control and
optimisation are mostly driven by
cost savings and regulations for
critical raw materials, such as rare
earths, Dodd-Frank [regulated]
conflict minerals,” he says. “The
biggest proponents of change have
been the brands themselves setting
a clear strategy. The problem is
that few organisations have actu-ally
looked at waste as a business
opportunity rather than a burden.”
This limited response may well
be explained in part by the weak
signals being received in general
from a customer base typically
still stuck in consumer mode,
as Adam Read, practice direc-tor
– waste management and
resource efficiency, at Ricardo-
AEA, explains: “Unfortunately,
the drive of consumerism is a little
like the Titanic – difficult to slow,
almost impossible to divert and
ultimately destined for failure.
Although consumers may not be
changing on their own, with strong
government leadership, responsi-ble
manufacturers and increasing
public awareness that recycling is
good, but waste prevention bet-ter,
we can expect to see a shift in
direction in the next decade or so.”
Are we nearing a tipping point?
Sophie Thomas, co-director of
design at the RSA and one of the
founders of the Great Recovery
Project, reimagining products and
material flow cycles, seems to think
so. She counsels though that things
could yet go one of two ways, with
the waste sector “either on the
cusp of something great or the edge
of a cliff”.
Dr Read concludes that breaking
traditional take-make-waste para-digms
depends on a clear business
case emerging on the supply-side
and a circle more material than
virtuous. “Ultimately, we are fac-ing
significant resource risks in
the electrical products world, from
rare-earth metals in particular, so
price will continue to increase as
scarcity worsens,” he says. “This
will drive innovation in product
design and processing, includ-ing
more closed-loop solutions
where electrical products are
never owned, just leased/rented
from manufacturers, thus ena-bling
them to control the supply of
increasingly valuable materials.”
For all the virtual community
and cloud computing advantages
afforded us by the latest electronic
and mobile technology, the means
to these online ends are still very
much grounded in physical com-modities
and mineral properties.
Paradoxical as it might seem, we
are living in a material e-world.
Motherboards
from Panasonic
home appliances
are recycled in
Kato, Japan
With strong government leadership,
responsible manufacturers and
increasing public awareness that
recycling is good, but waste prevention
better, we can expect to see a shift in
direction in the next decade or so
CASE STUDY
THIS YEAR’S MODULE
IS A PHONEBLOK
There are now more iPhones sold every day worldwide
than babies born and more mobile devices on Earth
than people.
Since the first call made on a 23cm-long 1.1kg Motorola
in 1973, the accelerating rate of obsoletion means an
average US cellphone is now kept for just 18 months.
Despite leasing initiatives, cashback offers, drawers
of “retired” kit, plus some reuse and recycling, global
e-waste mountains are growing at a rate in excess of
ten million mobiles a month.
For innovation and disruptive technology to make a
successful start tackling mobile-related resource
consumption and waste, it is wrong however to assume
size matters.
As Phonebloks founder Dave Hakkens explains: “To
tackle a big problem, you do not necessarily need a big
solution. With the emerging technology empire soon
to embrace the “internet of things”, even one solution –
such as a mobile phone – to just one part of the bigger
electronics problem still represents something of
significance and starts the market shift to
modular thinking.”
Phonebloks launched last year via viral video and
“crowdspeaking” social media, campaigning to demon-strate
the mass-market appeal of modular and attract
commercial production partners. Billed as “a phone
worth keeping”, Phonebloks challenges the notion that
electronics are not designed to last.
A collaborative open-platform venture, the concept
handset comprises detachable blocks – providing a
processor and storage capabilities, camera and screen
functions, for example – all connected through pins on
a base. The modular nature allows easy upgrading of
components.
This same designed-in interchangeability also facili-tates
customisation, described by Mr Hakkens as a
demand priority identified in market research.
“Talking to a diverse mix of technology users around
the world, with different priorities and situations, the
first rule of phone design we learnt is that there has to
be more to a mobile than just battery life and megapix-els,”
he says. “For some owners, being able to meas-ure
diabetes indicators or monitor a heartbeat features
much higher up the agenda than camera capability.
Any solution that aspires to become universal must
cater for the particular – customisation is key.”
It is important for marketability that users can person-alise
purchases with custom features and so invest in
a sense of ownership, choosing blocks they want and
supporting brands they like.
Coming full circle, Phonebloks has now teamed up
with Motorola, raising the prospect that modular might
just answer the call for more sustainable mobile tech-nology
begun four decades ago.
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8. MANAGING WASTE MANAGING WASTE
EXPLOITING
THE GREAT RECOVERY LIQUID ASSETS
OF EARTH’S RESOURCES
Once considered a source of pollution,
waste water now has fresh potential,
writes Sarah Murray
WASTE WATER
ȖȖWith global water stress an
increasing worry to companies,
governments and others, atten-tion
is focusing on how to conserve
this precious natural resource.
However, as materials scarcity
becomes more evident, another
question is now on the lips of cor-porate
leaders and policymakers –
what value can be extracted from
waste water?
Of course, part of the challenge
is to prevent water from being
wasted in the first place. The oil
industry, for example, generates
large volumes of waste water.
“They separate the oil and water,
and inject it back into a salt water
disposal well a mile underground
and it’s never used,” explains
James Wood, chairman and chief
executive of US-based ThermoEn-ergy.
Share and discuss online at raconteur.net
“That’s fine where you have
enough water. But it’s not so good
in west Texas, where they have
very bad drought conditions.”
ThermoEnergy’s flash vacuum
distillation technology is a phys-ical-
chemical process that uses
temperature and reduced pres-sure
to separate chemicals, metals
and nutrients from waste water.
This technology, argues Mr Wood,
could be used to turn the waste
water produced by the extractive
industries into water that could
be used by farmers, particularly in
areas of drought.
However, waste water contains
rich seams of chemicals and min-erals,
from nitrogen and phospho-rus
to propylene glycol and heavy
metals. Once viewed merely as a
costly or even toxic problem to be
dealt with, waste water and the
materials it contains are increas-ingly
being viewed as a means of
creating value.
Nitrogen and phosphorus, for
example, can create purification
and algae blooms in waterways. Yet
they are also valuable materials in
the manufacture of fertiliser.
For this reason, Vancouver-based
Ostara Nutrient Recovery Tech-nologies
has developed a way of
recovering phosphorus and nitro-gen
from municipal and industrial
waste water, and transforms them
into fertiliser.
“The technology is very much
geared towards making a market-able
product,” says Phillip Abrary,
Ostara president and chief execu-tive.
“We’ve changed our mindset
from seeing these things as a
source of pollution to developing
technologies that can take them
out and turn them into something
with the same or greater value.”
Many of Ostara’s clients are
municipalities for whom the
appeal is that they are able to
tackle pollution on several fronts.
While the technology enables
the cleaning of waste water, the
The myth that our Earth can provide the human
race with unlimited natural resources has been
well and truly busted, says Sophie Thomas
Sophie Thomas is co-director
of design at the RSA and
project director of The Great
Recovery programme
OPINION
ȖȖThe rising cost and restricted
supply of materials that go into
making the products we use every
day is creating a global race for sup-plies
of oil, gas, water, metals and
minerals, and fuelling geo-political
conflicts around the world.
And yet more than 30 tonnes of
waste are produced for every one
tonne of products reaching the
consumer, 90 per cent of which
are thrown away – mostly into
landfill – within six months of
purchase, according to the World
Economic Forum.
This linear model of “take-make-dispose”
is lending new meaning
to the concept of fast-moving
consumer goods and is throwing up
major economic, social and envi-ronmental
challenges.
Ever since the Industrial Revolu-tion,
businesses have pursued the
model of “more, faster, cheaper”,
but now, with growing extraction
costs, increasingly volatile markets
and the spectre of climate change
upon us, it is time to rethink our
basic systems of demand and sup-ply,
manufacture and disposal.
The Great Recovery project was
born at the RSA in 2012 in response
to some of these global pressures.
Along with my RSA co-director of
design Nat Hunter, I set out to dis-cover
what role design could play in
the re-programming of our linear
methods of production in order to
achieve something altogether more
circular, a system where products
are continuously reused, repaired
or reprocessed.
As a communications designer for
many years, experience had taught
me that much of our waste was, in
essence, a design flaw. European
Commission estimates show that
more than 80 per cent of a product’s
environmental impact is deter-mined
at the design stage, largely
through a lack of understanding, an
uncaring brief and the lack of incen-tives
to do anything differently.
The Great Recovery set out to
challenge the case for “business
as usual” by providing a space in
which designers can come together
with policymakers, manufactur-ers,
academics, waste managers,
chemists, retailers and consumers
to understand the challenges, and
co-create the new processes and
products that will be needed in a
circular economy.
Over the last 18 months, we have
been building these collaborative
networks and using the practi-cal
lens of the design industry to
focus on some of the problems and
opportunities involved in “closing
the loop”.
Our programme of workshops
and events set in the industrial
landscapes of recovery and recy-cling
facilities, disused tin mines
and materials research labs has
brought people from across all sec-tors
to participate in “tear down”
and “design up” sessions.
By literally pulling products off
the recycling pile and taking them
apart to understand how they are
currently designed, manufactured
and disposed, and then trying to
redesign and rebuild them around
our four design models for circular-ity,
we learnt some valuable lessons:
»» The role of design is crucial to
circularity, but very few designers
understand or think about what
happens to the products and services
they design at the end of their life;
»» New business models are needed
to support the circular economy;
»» The ability to track and trace
materials is key to reverse engi-neering
our manufacturing pro-cesses
and closing the loop;
»» Smarter logistics are required,
based on better information;
»» Building new partnerships
around the supply chain and
knowledge networks is critical.
This first phase of work also sup-ported
the Technology Strategy
Board, which has invested £1.25
million into a range of feasibility
studies proposed by business-led
groups and collaborative design
partners, through its New Designs
on a Circular Economy competition.
The inaugural 2014 Resource
exhibition sees the launch of the
next phase of work for The Great
Recovery in a two-year programme
that will bring together material-science
innovators, design experts,
leading manufacturers, and cru-cially,
end-of-life specialists to
explore the relationships between
design, materials and waste.
Our growing “re-materials”
library will be a tangible way for
people to experience the innova-tions
and challenges associated
with circular-economy thinking:
we may have efficient recycling
facilities to reprocess certain mate-rials,
for instance, but how are we
innovating to create longer-lasting
products or redesigning business
models for service or leasing?
In a move to nurture disruptive
thinking across the network, we
will be developing short-term
immersive design residencies that
can set up inside recovery facilities
around the UK. The design teams
will be there to observe and expe-rience
the complexity of recovery
systems, and to help inform think-ing
around current waste streams
and new product designs.
As well as building our online
platform and expanding our net-work
with events and investiga-tions,
we will be establishing the
first innovation hub in central
London. The hub will be a physical
focus for the exchange of ideas,
prototyping and experimentation,
and will also host bespoke business
workshops and consultations.
The Great Recovery is part of
the Action Research Centre at the
Royal Society for the Encourage-ment
of the Arts, Manufacture
and Commerce (RSA) and is
supported by the Technology
Strategy Board
With growing extraction costs,
increasingly volatile markets and
the spectre of climate change upon
us, it is time to rethink our basic
systems of demand and supply,
manufacture and disposal
industries such as agriculture,
chemicals, paper production and
textiles.
With demand for raw materi-als
rising, along with the price of
these commodities, more of these
kinds of technologies are likely to
emerge. “As a growing population
around the world, we need more
of the things that we’re consuming
and discarding – that’s a continu-ous
trend,” says Mr Abrary. “So a
sustainable source of materials
and basic elements is key.”
Often the extraction of materials
from water is driven by legislation
primarily designed to conserve
water, preserve clean water or
safely dispose of waste water
fertiliser Ostara produces with
the recovered phosphorus and
nitrogen is a slow-release product
that, because it does not dissolve
in water, prevents the run off of
chemicals into surrounding rivers
and waterways.
Often the extraction of materi-als
from water is driven by legis-lation
primarily designed to con-serve
water, preserve clean water
or safely dispose of waste water.
ThermoEnergy, for instance,
developed its waste water treat-ment
technology in New England
after the introduction of federal
standards for drinking water.
The legislation – the National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination
System – requires a disposal per-mit
for any water being put into a
sewerage system.
In New England, with a vibrant
metal-plating industry, the legis-lation
created demand for tech-nology
that could clean dissolved
metals, such as chrome, nickel
and zinc, from the water these
companies use in the metal-plating
process.
However, a second benefit of
ThermoEnergy’s technology has
emerged. “The metal-plating
industry now uses this machine
to recover metals they otherwise
would have thrown away,” says
Mr Wood.
Another use is in extracting gly-col
used in the de-icing fluid that
is sprayed on to planes at airports
during freezing weather. “You have
this flow back of water, from which
they look to recover the chemicals
because they are valuable,” he says.
Another extremely valuable com-modity
that can be extracted
from water is alginate. In the
Netherlands, Delft University of
Technology and a consortium of
partners have developed Nereda,
a low-energy technology that
makes minimal use of chemicals to
extract alginate from waste water.
The alginate is currently used
in food and medical products, but
could also potentially be used in
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