Waste Not, Want Not

Morning.  Dark and Cold.  Quickly downstairs I race - hurry, hurry.  Fling on coat, grab bag, throw open door.  Cats scatter as I tear down the path.  Can I do it?  Brakes squeal, heavy footsteps approach.  My bag is whisked away and...
Yes!  I almost missed the rubbish collection this week.

- Kay Francis, Thorndon from Brian Edwards' Book of Incredibly Short Stories Tandem Press 1997
 

by Barry Hawkins

Paper Mountain - Sophie Karehana sorts paper for recycling at New Zealand Paper Recyclers' wharf depot in Wellington

Recycle, reuse, rehash, reconstitute... it can all get a bit relentless.  Doing your bit to save the world by recycling doesn't always leave a warm inner glow.  Sometimes it can make you homicidal.

You carefully separate the salvageable items from the rest of the household trash and place them in the green Wellington City Council recycling bin.  Along comes the truck to take your neatly parcelled cans, plastics, paper and bottles to the recycler.  But what's this then?  Your recyclables are lobbed into rubbish headed for the landfill.  Outraged, you tell the council what it can do with its recycling system.  You vow that from then on everything goes to the dump and others can worry about the planet.

Council's solids waste manager Ken Mulholland admits this sometimes happens.  "We have seen it ourselves," he says.  It is hard to imagine anything more calculated to turn residents off recycling.  He says it is a breach of the collection contract.  "On occasions there has been some irresponsible activity undertaken by some of the workforce.  They have not followed their job instructions.  We hate to see it happen."

Those involved are "disciplined" but the blow to the credibility of household refuse recycling isn't as easily patched up.  Mulholland is aware of public suspicions that this sort of thing is widespread but he says these fears are misplaced.  The bulk of the items are recycled.  He hopes that as collection contracts are now up for renewal the council will be able to impose tougher conditions aimed at eliminating the problem.  "There have been two contractors one collecting rubbish, one recyclables.  There has been a bit of conflict on occasions.  We've had two trucks wanting to do the same street at the same time getting in each other's way.  Perhaps one contractor has interfered with the other's materials," he says.

"We want to eliminate that completely.  It gives a very bad impression if you have gone to a lot of trouble to wash your containers, put them in the recycling bin and then you happen to see your bin being emptied into a rubbish truck.  You are likely to be extremely annoyed."

There are other gripes about the system.  Many involve the bins, which have no lids.  Contents, especially paper, gets blown away and it is not uncommon to see empty bins bowling along in the wind like tumbleweeds.  Thieves sometimes beat the official collectors to valuable aluminium cans.  A person driving a BMW was spotted removing cans from bins in Lyall Bay.

Residents disenchanted with the failings of the domestic collection system who still want to recycle say they are being thwarted by the council's decision to close some recycling stations.  Mulholland says though the glitches attract publicity the six-year-old system which costs about $1 million annually is working fairly well.

The latest survey shows 40% of the city's householders are putting out their bin weekly, 67% monthly.  He says comparisons with other cities can mislead because of the different systems used but hopes changes to the new collection contracts will encourage more to take part.  Mulholland describes himself as an ardent recycler.  He and his wife put their bin out every two weeks.  They put out a refuse bag, which costs $1, every four weeks.  Not surprisingly, he has a more acute awareness of the problems of waste disposal than most.

"There is a cost in recycling but there are great benefits in educating people about the horrors of waste disposal, waste production."  There is also the feel-good factor.  "Doing something, even if it seems not a lot, is worthwhile.  What did I read in this morning's paper?  The rainforests in the Amazon Valley are disappearing at the rate of 20,000 square kilometres a year.  In Wellington we get these tremendous winds blowing every day with the El Nino weather pattern.  Is this as a result of the loss of the rainforests?

"I think to myself I'd better get stuck into my recycling."

Every little bit helps.

Where Does It All Go?

Who does what with Wellington city's refuse for recycling?

Paper and cardboard - Most shipped to Manila and made into newsprint and fibreboard.

Plastics - Various types sent to plants in New Zealand and Australia for making soft drink bottles, household and industrial containers, pipes and WCC recycling bins.

Aluminium cans - Recycled by Comalco at a smelter in New South Wales to make more cans.

Steel cans - Melted down at Glenbrook steel mill for various products, including steel reinforcing.

Glass bottles - Melted for reuse.

Source: The Evening Post Wednesday 4 February 1998; photo credit Phil Reid

Japanese Trash Talk Won't Go to Waste

by Norimitsu Onishi

Yohohama, Japan - When this city recently doubled the number of garbage categories to 10, it handed residents a 27-page booklet on how to sort their trash.  Highlights included detailed instructions on 518 items.  Lipstick goes into burnables; lipstick tubes, "after the contents have been used up," into "small metals" or plastics.  Take out your tape measure before tossing a kettle: under 12 inches, it goes into small metals; over that, it goes into bulky refuse.  Socks?  If only one, it is burnable; a pair goes into used cloth, though only if the socks "are not torn, and the left and right sock match."

"It was so hard at first," said Sumie Uchiki, 65, whose ward began wrestling with the 10 categories in October as an early trial.  "We were just not used to it.  I even needed to wear my reading glasses to sort out things correctly."  To Americans struggling with sorting trash into a few categories, Japan may provide a foretaste of daily life to come.  In a national drive to reduce waste and increase recycling, neighborhoods, office buildings and towns and are raising the number of trash categories - sometimes to dizzying heights.

Indeed, Yokohama, with 3.5 million people, appears slack compared with Kamikatsu, a town of 2,200 in the mountains of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's 4 main islands.  Not content with the 34 trash categories it defined four years ago as part of a major push to reduce waste, Kamikatsu has raised the number to 44.  In Japan, the long-term push to sort and recycle aims to reduce the amount of garbage that ends up in incinerators.  In land-scarce Japan, up to 80% of garbage is incinerated, while a similar ratio ends up in landfills in the United States.

The environmentally friendlier process of sorting and recycling may be more expensive than dumping, experts say, but it is comparable in cost to incineration.  "Sorting trash is not necessarily more expensive than incineration," said Hideki Kidohshi, a garbage researcher at the Centre for the Strategy of Emergence at the Japan Research Institute said.  "In Japan, sorting and recycling will make further progress."  For Yokohama, the goal is to reduce incinerated garbage by 30% over the next 5 years.  But Kamikatsu's goal is to eliminate all garbage by 2020.  In the past 4 years, Kamikatsu has halved the amount of incinerator-bound garbage and raised its recycled waste to 80%, town officials said.  Each household now has a garbage unit that recycles raw garbage into compost.

At the single Garbage Station where residents must take their trash, 44 bins collect everything from tofu containers to egg cartons, plastic bottle caps to disposable chopsticks, fluorescent tubes to futons.  Masaharu Tokimoto, 76, recently drove his pick-up truck to the station and expertly put brown bottles in their proper bin, clear bottles in theirs.  He looked at the labels on cans to determine whether they were aluminium or steel.  Flummoxed about one item, he stood paralysed for a minute before mumbling to himself, "This must be inside."  Some 15 minutes later, Tokimoto was done.  The town had gotten much cleaner with the new garbage policy, he said, though he added: "It's a bother, but I can't throw away the trash in the mountains.  It would be a violation."

In towns and villages where everybody knows one another, not sorting may be unthinkable.  In cities, though, not everybody complies, and perhaps more than any other act, sorting out the trash properly is regarded as proof you are a grown-up, responsible citizen.  In Yokohama, after a few neighborhoods started sorting last year, some residents stopped throwing away their trash at home.  Garbage bins at parks and convenience stores began filling up mysteriously with unsorted trash.

Enter the garbage guardians, the army of hawk-eyed volunteers across Japan who comb offending bags for, say, a telltale gas bill, then nudge the owner onto the right path.  One of the most tenacious is Mitsuharu Taniyama, 60, the owner of a small insurance business who drives around his ward every morning and evening, looking for mis-sorted trash.  He leaves notices at collection sites: "Mr So-and-so, your practice of sorting out garbage is wrong.  Please correct it."

Source: www.indystar.com from The New York Times 13 May 2005

Bucks to Be Made in Zero Waste

by Mathew Dearnaley and Simon Collins

In Kaitaia, the townsfolk celebrated the closing of their landfill by rolling out the white linen for an on-site banquet and the launch of a recycling base.  Ten years on, the Kaitaia Community Business and Environment Centre says it has turned the tide against senseless squandering of resources with a 66% reduction in waste carted from the town to the Far North's only big remaining landfill, at Ahipara.

The centre has become a major employer in a district of high joblessness, paying about $36,000 a month to 20 or so staff, and hiring up to 100 people a year for contracts in a range of activities from forestry to running the town's public swimming pool.

Recycling supervisor Lillian Cassidy, a former Auckland truck driver who moved back to Kaitaia with her husband, at first thought that sifting though society's cast-offs would be "right at the bottom of the scale."  But she has since become an ardent advocate for recycling, taking pride in the service she is supplying to the community and environment.

Meanwhile, in Opotiki, the district council's commitment to a "zero waste" society struck a less convivial chord at first, despite promises of a better environment and jobs for the long-term unemployed.  "There were 150 people in a hall baying for our blood," recalls district engineer David Reece of the reaction 18 months ago to the withdrawal of council rubbish skips from four coastal communities.

But he no longer has to deal with complaints about horse entrails, car bodies and broken furniture being strewn around the bins, and says there is little evidence of illegal dumping.  The introduction of tipping fees backed by kerbside recycling in urban Opotiki has left the district with 60% less residual waste, emboldening the council to stop searching for a replacement for its existing landfill, which is due to close in two years.  It expects more big cuts from the planned establishment of two new recycling centres, between Opotiki and East Cape, and is negotiating to truck the rest out of the district after running into opposition to an alternative landfill site.

Mr Reece admits he was among the doubters when an idealistic young Australian environmental consultant swept into the area, bent on changing his ways.  "I thought throwing rubbish in a hole was cheaper than anything else, and took a bit of convincing, but now I wonder why I thought the way I did."

Selling recovered resources helps to pay the wages of four previously unemployed people, and there will be two more jobs when the branch recycling centres open.  Modest though that might be, they are jobs plucked straight out of the waste stream, and the first chance of steady work for some.

Thirteen other jobs have been created in the district by a $1.3 million scheme, financed largely by the Eastern Bay Energy Trust, which has padded out 1000 homes of community card-holders with energy-saving materials.  A further 400 homes are awaiting similar treatment.  Low-income householders such as pensioners and sickness beneficiaries no longer have to huddle under blankets to keep warm, and are reporting fewer coughs and wheezes.

Other communities, including Thames and Waitara, have received subsidies from the Government's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority for similar projects, and the Auckland People's Centre is trying to drum up funds to insulate up to 300 Manukau homes.

The Kaitaia community business centre not only runs the town's recycling base and an associated kerbside collection, but operates depots in Te Hapua and Russell and is preparing a waste reduction plan for the Far North District Council.  It has four tutors touring schools with a "slash trash" message, owns plant and tree nurseries from which it runs landscaping and afforestation services, and holds shares in a solar water-heating firm providing subsidised units to community-card holders.

These are all practical examples of a concept dubbed natural capitalism, which is uniting business leaders and environmental activists in a global movement aimed at wiser uses of the earth's dwindling natural resources.

The idea is that by valuing resources as natural capital, competitive business advantage can be gained by doing more with less, plugging "leakages" from local and national economies and leaving more money in circulation.  In a finite world where there is an over-supply of labour, but the store of once-plentiful natural capital has been drawn down to dangerous levels for short-term profit, the mission is to improve resource productivity rather than continue to shed labour.

Paul Hawken and co-authors Amory and Hunter Lovins have written in their bible of the new order, Natural Capitalism, that greater gains can come from "firing" wasted energy capacity, oil and forest pulp - while hiring more people to do so.  The trio, have been hugely influential in their native United States, with President Bill Clinton and corporate giants paying close heed.  When Mr Hawken addressed a conference in Christchurch in June with fellow sustainability evangelist and Interface carpets company chairman Ray Anderson, Prime Minister Helen Clark rescheduled her weekly cabinet meeting to listen in.  She was challenged by Mr Hawken to help New Zealand to take advantage of its small size by becoming the first fully sustainable country, with a suggestion we could as an island nation adopt new technologies based on hydrogen from the waters surrounding us.

Mr Anderson, whose company is the world's largest commercial carpet-maker, has pioneered a system of leasing the "services" of his carpets, which can be resold once leases on them expire, while leaving more cash in customers' hands to spend on other services.

New Zealand firms ranging from Fletcher Challenge and the Dairy Board to The Warehouse and Hubbard Foods have, meanwhile, set up the Business Council for Sustainable Development, aimed at balanced social, environmental and economic development.  Although sceptics might paint it as a pale-green alternative to the Business Roundtable, growing ranks of environmentalists see a strategic alliance with corporates as the only way of redirecting the global materials flow in time to avert ecological disaster.

Opotiki and the Far North are not isolated examples of efforts at grassroots levels in New Zealand.  They are among 26 communities whose councils have signed to a radical goal of cutting their waste contributions to landfills to zero by 2015.  The roll covers 1/3 of the country's local bodies, with each receiving incentive payments of $25,000 from the Zero Waste trust, which is financed heavily by the Tindall Foundation of The Warehouse founder, Stephen Tindall.  No northern cities have yet joined the cause, but Christchurch and Dunedin are on the list, as are Thames-Coromandel, Otorohanga, Ruapehu, Kawerau, Gisborne, Wairoa, Palmerston North, Hastings and Porirua.

Zero Waste trust director Warren Snow says local communities are only now waking up to their power to stop the one-way flow into landfills, and to demand that products are redesigned for greater resource productivity.  "They are starting to put their hand over the pipe and say 'enough' - and it is sending shudders all the way up the supply chain."  But he is confident of the ability of businesses to respond, despite the difficulty of redesigning entire production systems built for a throwaway society.

"Waste is something business can relate to - business understands it very clearly because waste impacts on its bottom line."  He says a growing band of designers around the world are working out ways to make products easier to pull apart for recycling, including those at Auckland whiteware and healthcare equipment manufacturer Fisher & Paykel.  And he says manufacturers are realising that when products are designed for disassembly, they become simpler and hence cheaper to make, while those who remain inefficient will be driven out of business.

At the other end of the "pipe," a survey two years ago found Auckland's recycling industry was already employing more than 1,700 people at an average hourly wage of $12, and turning over at least $132 million annually.  One fIrm, Environplas Industries in Papakura, has added waste plastic granules to cement to develop light but tough patented paving slabs which it believes will become internationally competitive because of the lower freight costs.

Paralleling the Zero Waste campaign is the 28-member Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, which wants to take a leadership role in battling unemployment after the failure of successive Governments to get it below about 6% of the workforce.  The latest Household Labour Force Survey figure of 5.9% is the lowest in 12 years, but the taskforce is challenging the Government to support it in efforts to achieve a "zero waste" of people.

Christchurch Mayor and taskforce coordinator Garry Moore says there is no shortage of work to be done in the community, whether it is caring for the environment or for people such as the ill and elderly.  The challenge is for the Government to muster the political will to pay a living wage for work which until now has been under-valued, but which he says is essential for promoting a healthy society.  "We are trying to create a public awareness of an issue that hasn't gone away - we live with unemployed people, we see them walking the streets when they should be at work - their souls are dead."

The taskforce is preparing an action plan to ensure that by 2005, everyone under 25 either has a job or is training for a useful role in society.

Cliff Colquhoun, general manager of the Kaitaia centre he co-founded with Mr Snow, says it is constantly struggling for want of adequate Government support after 11 years of trying to promote community development.  Although it is hailed as a model of community enterprise, where few other such organisations have survived for long, he says it could be doing far more with just a modest lift in Government cash.  The centre receives only about $45,000 a year in Government development money, yet returns more than four times that amount in income tax and GST, while spending up to $500,000 in the local economy.  It is also saving the district council at least $75,000 a year on avoided landfill costs, while working in a grey area of profitability under which commercial companies would not find it viable to employ people.

Mr Colquhoun says community organisations are able to operate below break-even points, and hence employ more workers, if only the Government would provide top-up finance for "social entrepreneurs" such as himself to play their part.  He is disappointed his centre has had to trim job-creating operations to survive, while the Government seemingly prefers to spend more than $1 million a week on unemployment and related benefits in Kaitaia, not counting crime and other social costs.  He says there is no way capital investment can create enough jobs for the area's 1,600 unemployed.  A planned expansion of Juken Nissho's mill would produce 150 jobs at most, leaving community employment as the only tolerable alternative.

Source: Weekend Herald 11-12 November 2000; you can contact the authors by emailing mathew_dearnaley@herald.co.nz or simon_collins@herald.co.nz

NZ Firm Makes Bio-Diesel from Sewage in World First

by Errol Kiong

A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold.  Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algæ in sewage ponds.  It is believed to be the world's first commercial production of bio-diesel from "wild" algæ outside the laboratory - and the company expects to be producing at the rate of at least one million litres of the fuel each year from Blenheim by April.

To date, algæ-derived fuel has only been tested under controlled conditions with specially grown algæ crops, said spokesman Barrie Leay.  Aquaflow's algæ, however, were derived from excess pond discharge from the Marlborough District Council's sewage treatment works.  Algæ take most chemicals out of sewage, but having too many of them taints the water and produces a foul smell.  Creating fuel from the algæ removes the problem while producing useful clean water, said Mr Leay.  The clean water can then be used for stock food, irrigation and, if treated properly, for human consumption.  Mr Leay said the process could also benefit dairy farmers and food processors as the algæ also thrive in those industries' waste streams.  And unlike some bio-fuel sources which require crops to be specially grown - using more land, fuel, chemicals and fertilisers - the algæ already exist extensively.

To get the fuel, the algæ are processed into a pulp before lipid oils are extracted to be turned into bio-diesel.

Source: www.nzherald.co.nz 12 May 2006

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