Waste generation - at our own Peril

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, when I read last week about ongoing public consultations by NEA on whether "plastic carry-bags in some NTUC grocery outlets in Singapore should charge 5- 10 cents/ bag from mid-2023..." onwards. (link).

Like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic ... or throwing bits of candy into the maw of a charging, hungry tiger to stave him off from gulping you down in one bite!

Meanwhile figures show that the pandemic has led to further huge generation of medical waste worldwide.

This is unreasonably burdening existing systems, already staggering to manage their BAU waste.

On the one hand, we have learned how to separate medical and hazardous waste from other waste. My argument is that we need to further separate "technical waste" from "organic waste"- operating each in their own closed loop systems with ultimate aim being a zero-waste, zero-water, zero-carbon society.

If Covid-19 has taught us anything, as we hunker down in our own homes and neighborhoods, trying to battle wave after wave of variant striking country after country- it is this: Our consumption habits, production habits, and waste-generating habits in every sphere of activity has trashed the environment; and society as a whole is paying the price. There is an urgent need to redesign our systems, policies, and individual and collective behavior to actively reverse and regenerate.

On the waste management front, instead of finding ways to manage the growing amounts of plastic waste, solutions should aim to generate less waste at the outset. But as we have also found out in battling this pandemic- digital traceability tokens, software and process can be feasibly applied to ensure separation and non-mixing of different categories. In my view, this is not an option, but an urgent necessity!

I was therefore motivated to write this article to describe some design principles that have worked in other societies to regenerate the environment.

Instead of the current business model of our society, consider the alternate vision, more like a community of ants.

This picture, from a walk in the Botanic Gardents, is of an anteater, snacking on ants.

Ants are a good example of a population whose density and productiveness are not problematic for the rest of the world because everything they make and use returns to the “cradle to cradle” cycles of nature.

As part of their daily activities, ants:

• safely handle their own waste and of other species
• grow and harvest their own food
• construct houses, farms, dumps, cemeteries, living quarters, and food storage facilities from materials that can be truly recycled
• create disinfectants and medicines that are healthy and biodegradable
• maintain soil health for the planet.

Similar to the colony of ants, we too, as part of the new bio-effective design of our post-industrial, post-COVID society, should aim for:

• buildings that produce more energy than they consume and purify their own wastewater
• factories that produce effluents that are drinking water
• products that can be tossed to decompose and become food for the soil, or alternately that return to industry cycles to be used in making new products
• transportation that improves quality of life while delivering goods and services

and so on.

The 2002 book “Cradle to Cradle” by Michael Braungart and William McDonough brings out this alternate business model very well. They propose a fundamental shift based on the concept that “waste = food” i.e what is considered waste in one cycle, can become food in a new product cycle.

This movement has been successful in the Netherlands where the Dutch have cultivated a culture of support. Small size, a willingness to be open to new ideas from anywhere, and a test-and-learn culture promoting collaboration between manufacturers, researchers and users has led to their success; with government procurement incorporating these criteria into their purchases and everybody from big firms to small using this in the design of products and packaging, buildings, and production systems.

This can be imitated by small nations like Singapore too, to great effect.

As per this system, all products have to be designed such that all materials can be classified into one of two cyclical systems:

• Biological nutrients: Materials that naturally biodegrade and can be returned to the ecological system. Examples of such materials are natural fibres and bioplastics.
• Technology nutrients: Metals, oil-based plastics, and chemicals as examples of valuable materials that can be recycled or reused, producing the same or better quality, with resultant lower energy intensity, in closed systems.

But- provided they are not mixed.

A related corollary, for the above to be practical, is the concept of “products as service”. Instead of assuming that all products should be bought, owned, and disposed of by “consumers”, products containing valuable technical nutrients (cars, carpets, computers, refrigerators!) are reconceived as services people want to enjoy.

Customers (not consumers) would purchase the service for a defined user period (ex: 10,000 hours of TV viewing) and when they are ready to upgrade, the manufacturer would replace it, break it down, and use its complex materials as food for new products. "Preloved" becomes a default purchasing choice but “Extended producer responsibility” is the concept that makes all this scalable, and harnesses the power of industry and private corporations to make this a reality for society as a whole.

Putting eco-effectiveness into practice will require redesigning the production metric and the consumption theme of a capitalistic society, into a disciplined move towards:

• Turning away from known bioaccumulative poisonous substances like plastics, heavy metals that leach into the soil, etc.
• Making informed personal choices: Try not to go for monstrous hybrids like polyester-filled clothing, heavily dyed substances, chemicals, and additives in food, etc.
• Reinventing, restoring at scale, and exerting intergenerational responsibility.

Some bare minimum steps that each of us can root for, within the spheres of our own individual influence, as well as in our organizations and communities:

• First, make it transparent.
• Then, make it systemically feasible to compete amongst ourselves for how much we can do to measure and track the change in behavior.
• Actively instigate employee activism; embrace stakeholder activism. In this, creative ways in which employees can do meaningful contributions to the movement too can make it a fun thing to stand for eco-effectiveness.
• Influence change in the community by having your company and society set an example and actively proselytize improved design choices.
• Finally, do not feel compelled to just copy solutions from other markets, rather genuinely embrace local and diversified solutions that have worked in the past.

However, must not forget that the disciplined and urgent collective organized action has to be done properly, scientifically, and exponentially. So for leaders and organizations and board members who would like to do their bit in adopting this framework:

• Have the organization focus on these areas more consistently by appointing a CSO who is accountable to coagulate the activities on these areas
• Innovate new projects while ensuring that design principles are structured around the SDGs and measuring impact on society
• Disciplined impact assessment with milestones set around these areas, tracking the positive changes that have occurred because of the closed-loop systems
• Be sensible and practical in exploring as to the limits to which you can go with remote work. Have a clear sense of measurement of pre- and post-, starting with a clear baseline and targets.
• The time tradeoff vs. the cost tradeoff can be quite sizeable, so sharing best practices on how to make planet friendly actions easier can be quite helpful also.
• Finally, a word on plastic consumption, especially in packaging and “disposable” cutlery. Innovation need not go very far to remedy just these very basic assumptions of our industrial society; it is time to realize that when we throw away, there is no “away”!
• In that respect it is utterly incomprehensible that we are OK as a society with using plastics (that have >500 year life) to shrink-wrap edible items like eggs and fruit (that have <2 days of shelf life), when items like bamboo and banana leaf and jute exist.

The good news is that there is greater consensus about the need for change. But the current “sustainability” discussions are nascent and can easily become a case of “too little, too late”. As I have detailed above, a complete overhaul and reworking, systemic policy change to nudge behavior change at an individual, company and society-wide level, is an urgent priority. There is no room now for incrementalism, or making colossal errors in policy as may have been OK in an earlier time.

As Gandhiji enduringly (and endearingly) put it: “Be the Change You Wish To See In The World”. Today, and every day, let us be conscious of our footprint and keep it at the bare minimum. As we are not "inheritors" of the earth but only custodians, and trustees for future generations, while we are here.