Manage your waste management centre

Referring to Nicholas Moran's post On Environmental Consulting Professionals Group

8 Pro Tips to Manage Your Waste Management/Recycling Center8 Pro Tips to Manage Your Waste Management/Recycling Center by Nicholas Moran

The critical idea I note in Nicholas’ post and which we can observe every day in Asia Pacific where my organisation works is:

"Without proper maintenance, recycling centres can quickly degenerate into an expensive headache or even a safety hazard."

In the western world (including Australia and New Zealand) you may be fortunate to own safe and running recycling centres.

They may be producing output carrying some value.

Hopefully they are well designed and engineered.

They also are likely to be monitored and maintained, for a simple reason: People watch, they have a say they have a vote.

In our developing part of the world, Asia Pacific, waste management business is just starting.

Most municipalities and local administrations are dropping wastes into (sometimes) remote landfills as the main solution, the best existing alternative being thermal treatment with the carbon footprint and other side effects this involves.

Numerous new so-called “sustainable” systems start being promoted, some of them excellent, some of them poorly adapted to the local conditions and structures, most of them quite costly when compared to the easy status quo.

Most of these initiatives miss a key point: their Return on Investment.

In Asia, where cities’ populations tend to be huge and poorly organised, slums are a daily reality.

The level of sustainable infrastructures is still at a development stage.

Huge masses of municipal wet waste are produced everyday.

Solid waste production is also significant but individual collectors are handling its selection and collection processes down in the street.

Wet waste, dangerous waste and hospital waste are what are left to handle.

With the adapted treatment this waste may be converted into gas, solid reusable pellets, fertiliser and whatever locally reusable output product. This is what all manufacturers are promoting, with diverse levels of truth and / or accuracy.

The main issue is that very little consideration is given to the return on investment.

Most deciding local municipal, regional, sometimes state authorities think about short-term image, budget, and in the best-case cost of ownership.

Like most authorities they are not able to think about long-term issues and sustainable business.

This is where a solid management concept should come into the picture:

Spend time and some resources to set up a comprehensive business plan for your waste treatment centre.

This Business plan will be complete with

• An input plan, evaluating the actual waste resources as a commodity and no longer as a mass of material to dispose of
• An output plan, evaluating the value of the products generated by the plant
• The customers who will buy the output
• A communication plan and stakeholders analysis for the changes implementation that the project will carry
• A strict and comprehensive maintenance plan

This must be done at the project evaluation stage, before the first stone is laid down and the first Dollar spent on the development and realisation phases of that project.

Return On Investment, even low and slow, is the only engine, the key motivator of a real sustainable recycling system.

If it makes money, owners and authorities will take care of it.

If it does not generate cash or any valued output, it will run and stay. It will age, become more a problem than the solution. It is very likely going to become a real safety hazard.

In the western world, vote may be a fair Return on Investment.

In the developing world, cash and material advantages are the only values that will count and drive this business.

Images all around the developing world are sad witnesses of what I just said.

Didier Delaval

Strategic Network and Development Ltd (Asia Pacific)

Executive Director

www.strategicnetworkdev.com

At Strategic Network and Development Ltd we concentrate on our Clients’ vital Strategic & Operational Objectives.