The road to zero waste

Published in Sustainability magazine, Spring 2007

The minister for the environment has been busy praising his government’s record on residential and commercial waste management in light of a new EPA report, but a whole new approach is necessary if we are serious about conserving our most precious resources, writes Lenny Antonelli

Anyone who has been listening to environment minister Dick Roche lately might have gotten the impression that Ireland had suddenly become a champion of sustainable waste management. Addressing the Recycling Consultative Forum at Dublin Castle back in January, the minister described the advances made in waste management in Ireland over the past eight years as “remarkable”. He emphasised his “delight” at Ireland meeting its EU recycling target for 2013 eight years ahead of schedule, and claimed that there was “evidence that we are breaking the link between economic growth and waste generation”. Speaking last October, he claimed that Ireland was on its way to becoming a “leading European recycling nation”, and with regards to waste management, he previously said that Ireland has been “phenomenally successful”. Lavishly praising your own record in office has long been a pastime of many politicians. But can the minister back-up his celebratory mood?
Many of the facts and figures that prompted his glee were contained in the Environmental Protection Agency’s national waste report for 2005, released in January. And while on the surface it shows some positive trends, it ultimately paints a picture of a nation that’s management of waste remains totally unsustainable.
First, and briefly, the good news: Ireland has indeed already met the 2013 recycling target set by the EU, and has exceeded the specific target set for the recycling of packaging materials. Rates of recycling continue to increase nationwide, while the number of bring banks and recycling centres also continues to grow, and the collection of kerbside dry recyclables almost doubled in 2005.
But while some of the specific trends may be positive, the bigger picture is somewhat more grim. The overall rate of recycling for the residential and commercial sector remains poor. Ireland may have already hit its 2013 recycling target, but that goal in itself is decidedly unambitious at 35 per cent. Disappointingly, less than a quarter of household waste is recycled. Almost two million tonnes of commercial and residential waste still ends up in landfill every year, while less than 20 per cent of plastics and 10 per cent of organic (compostable) waste is recycled.
What’s perhaps most alarming is what we’re doing with most of the material collected for recycling: shipping it abroad. Over 95 per cent of our paper and cardboard is exported since the closure of the Smurfit paper mill. The figures are similar for glass, while over three quarters of plastic and textiles are also shipped abroad. In fact, of all of our major categories of municipal waste, there is only one – wood – of which the majority is recycled here in Ireland, and that comprises just a small fraction of our residential and commercial waste stream.
Clearly, there is little point in developing systems designed to manage waste sustainably if they are contributing to the unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels and the production of unnecessary greenhouse gases. Almost half a million tonnes of waste was exported for recycling in 2005, a 25 per cent increase on the previous year. And while over half of this was only sent as far as western European countries, the EPA conceedes that a “certain proportion of Irish waste exported to EU countries is shipped onwards within and outside of the EU”.
Most worryingly, over 100,000 tonnes was sent as far Asia, and over a third of this went to China, a country where foreign recyclables are often dealt with by poorly paid migrant workers in rudimentary facilities or backstreet workshops with little environmental or labour standards.
Other figures also undermine the minister’s boasting. Almost three quarters of household and commercial waste is biodegradable, yet over half of this is landfilled. Under the EU’s landfill directive, Ireland was supposed to reduce the amount of biodegradable waste going to landfill to 75 per cent of the 1995 figure by last year, but disappointingly opted for a four-year postponement of the target. It is still likely to be missed.
So then, to which category does Ireland belong – modern, sophisticated, western European nation that has fully embraced recycling, or one that is still lagging far behind?
According to Dr Niamh Clune, the director of Zero Waste Alliance Ireland, we’re not doing nearly as well as we could be. “We’re doing very well in some ways. We haven’t be doing it as long, and we have caught up quickly. But I believe it is possible to recycle 90 per cent of everything defined as waste. We’re not doing nearly as much as we could.” Zero waste is a philosophy that emphasises reducing and reusing waste as much as possible at all stages of our society and economy, and then using what waste we do produce as a resource to produce new goods. Dr Clune has been a champion of resource recovery parks in Ireland – collections of small business in a single location involved in reusing, recycling and composting waste, which can then be made into new products and sold. “Everything is brought to one place”, Niamh explains, “where it can be turned into value added products. It creates new business and new innovations, and profits can be used to fund community projects.” While acknowledging that we’ve made some progress in recent years, Dr Clune says that we’re just “bringing in methods from Europe, where they’ve been making mistakes for years. We have a chance to do something innovative and new here.” She believes that what she sees as the unique sense of community in Ireland can foster real local innovations in recycling.
Dr Clune certainly intends to lead by example. She is currently waiting to hear if Galway County Council will give her the go-ahead for the development of a resource recovery park in her home town of Gort, Co Galway. If the project get approved, it will be the first facility of its kind in Europe.
What’s needed, according to Niamh, is a “paradigm shift in thinking”, from seeing waste as just an unwanted byproduct to a potential resource. “I believe that waste is the new gold mine of the 21st century”, she says. “It’s a no-brainer to make…products out of our resources, it’s just about having a holistic, whole-systems approach.” Having conducted two feasibility studies in Galway, Dr Clune has concluded that resource recovery parks could potentially save businesses 70 per cent of their refuse charges. She also claims to have identified six potential products that could be developed from common items found in Gort’s waste. “It doesn’t make economic sense” she says, referring to traditional methods of waste management.
It is clear that innovation and new ideas are urgently needed. As long as our reasons for recycling are simply to rid ourselves of a growing mountain of waste on a small island, avoid the awkward task of where to locate landfills, and maintain a clean image, we will continue to be satisfied with a waste management system that recycles a moderate amount of waste, sending most of it abroad.
However, if we are serious about conserving our most precious resources – the petrochemicals that make our plastics, the trees that make our paper and cardboard, the metals that make our tins and cans – we must adapt a whole new approach, one that firstly, vastly reduces the amount of waste we create (something that will be discussed in further detail in future issues of Sustainability) and then reuses and recycles almost all of the rest. New thinking, such as resource recovery parks, must be a part of that, as must more traditional solutions, such as shifting our mindset to see many of the common ‘waste’ items in our homes as what they are: minute packages of vastly depleting resources, rather than throwaway items of infinite supply.
On a national and local scale, there are many good ideas to inspire us. In Denmark, 98 per cent of bottles are refillable, and 98 per cent of these are returned by customers. In Canada and other countries, deposit refund schemes enable people to return such bottles and be paid a small fee for each one. In its waste policy, the Green Party promises to provide financial aid for community-run, not-for-profit recycling initiatives, to establish a national resource exchange network – a central database that would allow people to advertise available materials and suggest possible uses – and to provide a home composter to every home that can take one. Government incentives and initiative can develop resource recovery parks and a develop the recycling enterprise in Ireland to prevent recyclables from being needlessly transported abroad.
While Minister Roche may applaud our progress, we must acknowledge that what we have achieved and the future milestones we hope to reach are insufficient if we are serious about making a contribution to conserving our rapidly depleting natural resources. His party’s slogan at the last election has been much debased in the media, but considering the importance of this issue, doing so again seems an appropriate way to depict his government’s record on waste management and the challenges that face us if we are to master it in a truly sustainable way: A little done, a lot, lot more to do.