Imagine... the year is 2250 and another life form has landed on earth. We have seen this similar scenario played out in many movies. What will these newcomers think of our planet once we are no longer here? What will they notice first? My first thought has always been that they will be shocked at how poorly we utilised and discarded our precious resources.
We have become a throw-away society and its ugly cousin, planned obsolescence, is an actual thing. Products are produced with inferior materials and designs in order to generate revenue in years to come from parts and service departments or from selling the same products which are branded as “New and Improved”, when essentially they would be better off pitched as “Same and Worse”.
While waste management practices have improved over the years, the first “R” in today’s waste and recycling industry is Reduce. We live in a society that needs to urgently reduce our consumption. We are running out of precious natural resources and our overall environmental impact (or footprint) is clearly overwhelming the planet.
I will not even bother getting into the climate change discussion that some would like to deny despite staggering evidence supporting the matter.
So, here is a question that might be the solution to our problem…if we can find the answer! How do we reduce our consumption in the capitalist system we live in? We have all heard of the saying “If you’re not growing, you’re dying” but is this really the case? Can we be both consumers and sustainable at the same time? Whose responsibility is the waste we produce, the manufacturer or the consumer? Is the producer creating a product for which there is a need or are they creating the need through branding and psychological marketing to generate the motivation to buy? Are producers being held accountable for their manufacturing practices? Fertilizer run-off from farming, emissions from petrochemical plants, burn-off from incineration facilities, and many more manufacturing facilities are reeking havoc.
The producer responsibility model that has been reviewed aims to place responsibility on the manufacturer. The manufacturer argues that they are simply producing products for consumers and the consumer should be responsible for the costs associated with waste management after the fact through municipal waste programs paid with our taxes.
The consumer responsibility model that we currently have in most countries wants to shift some, if not all, of these costs onto the producer because while consumers are the driver of demand they argue that they have no control over packaging…think children’s toys for a moment. You purchase a 10cm plastic/metal model car and it comes in a package that is ten times larger than the toy itself.
That waste by-product now must go in the recycling bin, where it will get picked up, processed (shredded, pelletized, and baled) and recycled in another production – this is the best-case scenario. The likelier scenario is that it will end up in the wrong bin, shipped to a landfill, sent to a foreign country with little to no regulations, or worst case scenario, it will end up in our oceans. Once we discard our child’s short lived happiness, the packaging (and eventually the toy) will pollute the air, land and oceans for generations to come without any regard for how much energy and resources it took to produce it in the first place.
Quality and sustainable production is costly but worth it. The economies of scale and traditional supply and demand models make organic farming costs more than traditional (supplemented/fertilized farming), “cheap” fossil fuels and coal cost more than newer cleaner/renewable energy options, and local manufacturing in Canada and the US is far more costly than cheap production due to outsourced cheap labour in foreign countries.
Ultimately if we do not pay now, we will pay later. Most production models today externalize costs and the price of what we pay for inexpensive (cheap) goods does not reflect the entire overall cost (environmental, waste, ethical) of the final product. The western world has outsourced much of its production to the far east, namely China and India, making a majority of the environmental (externalized) costs invisible to the western consumer.
I believe it is far less important to find fault than it is to find a solution. Becoming the change we want to see is the best way to go. Not too far back, maybe a generation or two ago, our father’s, mother’s, grandmother’s, and grandfather’s would always find a way to repurpose items instead of throwing things away. Reducing waste is the best way to manage our resources and reduce our environmental impact.
People may wonder why anyone in an industry that makes money from “waste” would want people to rethink their buying habits. We all need to recognize the reality that there will always be “waste” for us to haul, salvage and/or recycle. The global population has grown from 5.28 billion to nearly 8 billion in just 30 years so as you can imagine, there will continue to be waste generation, but our goal should always be zero waste.
Jimmy Carter once said: “Solid wastes" are the discarded leftovers of our advanced consumer society. This growing mountain of garbage and trash represents not only an attitude of indifference toward valuable natural resources, but also a serious economic and public health problem.”
Maybe the first “R” in waste should be Rethink, instead of Reduce, or we will soon have to replace all of the “R’s” with the far less attractive option of REGRET.
Alt Mangal
Sustainable Waste Services Inc.
June 2020