LAST MINUTE MARKET – a great tool of waste prevention

In the last post we dealt with the worrying amounts of food waste in Europe. In this post we want to present an european fantastic and succesful initiative to reduce the food waste; the Last Minute Market.

Last Minute Market (LMM) links shops and producers (processing industries, food shops, retail stores and the like) who have unsold food which would otherwise be discarded with people and charities who need food.
Prof. Andrea Segrè started with this project in 1998. The University of Bologna developped SMM as a spin-off and it is now active in more than 40 Italian towns and has new projects starting in other places in the world.

LMM operates in the areas of unsold but edible food, unharvested vegetables, non-conform seeds, un-used catering products, unsold books and now also unused pharmaceuticals.

LMM eliminates waste by helping companies manage surplus (food and other items) and taking them out of the disposal route. Public institutions and communities also benefit from the reduction in the flow of waste to landfill and incineration which saves them money in taxes, health and environmental damage and less dependency on further foreign food imports. Finally it also improves food availability for the sectors of society that need it, and third sector (charity) destinataries who reduce operating costs and release resources for other projects.

LMM brings about environmental, economic and social benefits. According to founder Prof. Segrè if LMM Food were to be adopted nationwide in Italy by supermarkets, small shops and cash and carry shops, €928,157,600 would be recuperated in products. Furthermore, these products could provide 3 meals a day to 636,000 people – in total 580,402,025 meals a year. Also by not sending these products to the landfill, 291,393 tonnes of CO2 emissions could be spared.

In April 2010 LMM launched “ancora utili”, a program to recuperate unexpired prescription drugs donated by single users, doctors or hospitals. The pilot project in Ferrara has involved 11 pharmacies is projected to collect drugs for a market value of 15,000 euros per year.

In October 2010 LMM was presented in the European Parliament and the Agriculture Committee approved this resolution to reduce 50% of the amount of food waste throughout the food chain.

LMM is a win-win project and another piece of a Zero Waste strategy. The prevention of waste helps optimise resource use with benefits for the different stakeholders as well as for the environment.

For further information (in italian) see www.lastminutemarket.org

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Towards Zero Food Waste in the EU

In Europe an estimated amount of 50% of the food produced is wasted. This changes from country to country and from sector to sector but in the best case not less than 20% of our food ends up as waste. At the same time more than 50 million of Europeans are at the risk of poverty. This is simply unacceptable from a social, economic and environmental point of view.

Unhealthy, uneconomic and unsustainable

In Sweden, an average household is estimated to throw away 25% of food purchased. An average Danish family with 2 adults and 2 children wastes food for 1.341 € a year (2.15 billion € for the whole country). In Italy, about 20.290.767 tonnes of food waste are formed every year along the whole supply chain. Each French citizen throws away every year 7 kilos of food still in the original package when in the same country, 8 million people are at risk of poverty.

Simultaneously, studies show that western countries are consuming every day a surplus of 1400 calories per person for a total of 150 trillion calories a year. So, apart from the waste in the food supply chain, overeating is gradually becoming a serious public health issue in a growing number of countries.

From the environmental perspective food waste accounts for more than one quarter of the total consumptive use of finite and vulnerable freshwater and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year. Moreover each tonne of food waste generates 4.2 tonnes of CO2.

How is food waste generated?

Among the many several reasons we find that packages are too large for small households, that the portions prepared for each meal tend to be too big, failed preparation of the recipe, incorrect transport, fear of deterioration caused by the proximity to the expire date, not wanting to eat leftovers from the previous day, bad refrigerator... Nothing that can’t be fixed.

Taking action for Zero Food Waste

Like with any other process human beings have to learn to manage this resource named food. In the past a lot less food was wasted; the wastage started 50 years ago with the over-abundance of products and very low cost of disposal; this caused that Europeans paid less attention to the food waste they generated.

Times have changed; overabundance times are over and the costs of this irresponsible and inefficient behaviour are increasing. The world population has grown tenfold and hunger is still persistent and growing –also in Europe-, the EU has constant and unsustainable yearly deficit of 75 million tons of biomass with the rest of the world, the costs of disposal for waste continue to increase and EU legislation pushes in prevention.
Much of the food wastage can be reduced with the right prevention policies and campaigns to make sure that what would otherwise be waste can be still eaten or reintroduced in the system. Measures as simple as changing the size of the portions, supplying food in smaller packages (beware of the packaging waste), training young people in how to preserve food, etc… are part of the tool-box we need to address the problem.

In this direction, it is to be welcomed that on the 28th October 2010 the agriculture committee of the European Parliament approved a joint declaration against food waste in which they were asking for a reduction of 50% of the amount of food waste throughout the food chain.

Unfortunately the Environment Directorate of the European Commission still hasn't considered appropiate to include neither waste prevention targets nor recycling targets for biowaste in EU legislation which is stopping the EU from making major shift forward in the reduction of food waste. In the future it will be necessary to work at European, national and local level in order to reduce this big sign of unsustainability and inefficiency that is food waste.

Below we can find some encouraging initiatives and campaigns in some EU member states:

United Kingdom Loves Food and Hates Waste

In Britain every year 18 million tonnes of food still perfectly edible are thrown away (WRAP) by households alone for an annual retail value cost of 14 billion pounds: at the same time 4 million people in the UK do not have access to a healthy diet. The environmental implications of stopping to produce food waste would have a CO2 equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road.

For this reason WRAP launched the campaign “Love Food - Hate Waste” in 2007 which by January 2009 was already a success in making 2 million UK households take steps to reduce food waste: this has stopped 137,000 tons of food from being thrown away which prevented 600,000 tonnes being emitted and resulted in a saving of nearly 300 million £ .

Visit their website for great tips about how to reduce your food waste: http://www.LoveFoodHateWaste.com

Holland tastes the food waste

The Netherlands is throwing away 2.4 billion € per year on food waste, that is more than 400€ per household representing more than 20% of the total food in the market.

For this reason the Dutch government has committed to reduce by at least 20% the food waste by 2015. To achieve this goal and following the example of the successful initiative in the UK the campaign “taste the waste” has been launched in which they teach how to save money without too much extra effort.
The Dutch campaign has also sparked the creation of a global campaign to fight food waste, that is www.tastethewaste.com

Sources:
French Environment and Energy Management Agency
Danish Agriculture & Food Council -2010
Lundqvist, J. 2010 ’Producing more or Wasting Less. Bracing the food security challenge of unpredictable rainfall’.
The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact by Kevin D. Hall, Juen Guo, Michael Dore, Carson C. Chow

READ MORE - Towards Zero Food Waste in the EU

Zero Waste to reduce EU dependency on materials

The clever thing about minimising waste and recycling stuff is that we recover the materials and we can use them again instead of having to import them from far at increasing prices.

The resources in the world are not only limited; they are also becoming more and more scarce and hence more difficult, polluting and expensive to extract. In absolute terms, Europe is using more and more resources. For example, resource use increased by 34 % between 2000 and 2007 in the EU-12. This continues to have considerable environmental and economic consequences. Of 8.2 billion tonnes of materials used in the E-27 in 2007, minerals and including metals accounted for more than half, and fossil fuels and biomass for about a quarter each.
In the following graph we can see how heavily dependent is the EU from imports of metals (source EEA).

For the majority of metals the EU depends 100% on its imports. At the same time what we see is that in the EU 50% of the recyclable municipal waste is landfilled or incinerated and the exports –legal and ilegal- of metals and electronics to be recycled –mostly downcycled- have increased. From the strategic point of view –let alone environmental and economical considerations- this is nothing less than stupid.

The recycling sector in Europe has an estimated turnover of EUR 24 billion and employs about half a million persons. Thus, the EU has 50 % of the recycling industries in the world. Yet, the EU lets most of its electronic waste to be shipped abroad for low quality recycling when nobody in the earth needs more the resources than the EU.

The EU has been producing legislation to try to shift this exodus of materials into european recycling plants. So far the directive on waste from electric and electronic equipment has required that every member state collects 4kg per capita per year but right now there are countries like Belgium or Germany that are well above this target whilst others are far below. The revision of the WEEE aims to collect 65% of generated WEEE by 2016 which is a very necessary improvement to create jobs and a solid recycling industry in Europe that reduces necessity to extract, process, and transport the materials that we need.

Some companies are proving that, if they are given the chance, they can recover most of the materials and generate jobs and economic activity whilst avoiding the extra emissions of exporting waste for disposal and having to extract and manufacture new materials. Umicore, for instance, is one of the leading companies in Europe in recycling of WEEE and shows the changing trends; from being a belgian mining company with poor environmental record they understood that the future was to focus not on extracting materials from the earth but rather to extract them from the already produced equipments that had become waste. Thanks to this Umicore has not only managed to be a world leading recycler but it has also managed to pay its environmental liabilities.

Umicore treats 300.000 tones of electric and electronic waste from which only 15.000 tones become waste; that is 95% of the waste is recycled. Whilst there are some rare earths present in small devices such as mobile phones and which so far can’t be recovered the truth is that most metals are recovered at a higher rate than what can be achieved in backyard recycling –what would happen if exported outside Europe-. For instance, in Umicore 95 to 99% of gold is recovered whilst in backyard recycling only 20 to 25% can be recovered –with a lot higher enviornmental and health impact-.

It is therefore possible to close the loop in some sectors of our economy but in order to do so it is necessary that the authorities collaborate with the right legislation and market drivers. Highly efficient recycling systems keep jobs in Europe, reduce dependency from imports, lower emissions, reduce environmental impact in third countries and help move in the direction of sustainability if they are combined with the right prevention tools.

Zero Waste is about reducing the use of materials, reusing them as much as possible and recycling them as last option. Europe can’t afford to continue trashing resources; eliminating waste with incineration and landfill don’t make sense but this is even more true in the case of electric and electronic waste.

The clever thing about minimising waste and recycling stuff is that we recover the materials and we can use them again instead of having to import them from far at increasing prices.
The resources in the world are not only limited; they are also becoming more and more scarce and hence more difficult, polluting and expensive to extract. In absolute terms, Europe is using more and more resources. For example, resource use increased by 34 % between 2000 and 2007 in the EU-12. This continues to have considerable environmental and economic consequences. Of 8.2 billion tonnes of materials used in the E-27 in 2007, minerals and including metals accounted for more than half, and fossil fuels and biomass for about a quarter each.
In the following graph we can see how heavily dependent is the EU from imports of metals (source EEA).

READ MORE - Zero Waste to reduce EU dependency on materials

Zero Waste is about minimising the residual waste

In the last post we have explained why a society that manages to recycle 100% of its waste would not necessarily be sustainable. Our goal should be not only to recycle more, but to waste less.

Europe imports 5 times more energy and resources than it exports, hence most of the trash that we bury or burn in Europe is not “ours”; is not always going to be there. In a world with finite resources and where emerging economies use more and more resources the Europeans will have to learn to make more with less if we want to keep our comfort standards. This is a radical change; what matters today is not labour productivity –as it has been since the industrial revolution- but the material productivity. Europe has to dramatically increase the efficiency with which it handles the resources and burning or burying them is not sensible.

See in the graph below -Eurostat data- the difference between the increase in labour productivity and material productivity in EU15.

For instance, one-way containers might make sense for the internal economics of some packaging companies but it is a very inefficient handling of materials which will be necessary in the future. Public authorities need to step in the markets to maximise the use of materials.

Zero Waste as a continued effort to prevent, reuse, recycle, and still look into residuals to see what can be done further is a good approach to measure material productivity; an economy that minimises the residual fraction of the waste is more energy and material efficient than an economy that generates waste -be it in the extraction, transport, manufacture and consumption phase-.

Why is it good to minimise the residual fraction

Besides the necessary increase of the material productivity for the future of the European economy there are other reasons to minimise the residual fraction.

When we talk about municipal waste the most expensive waste to treat once we consider the obligation of pretreatment, financial liability, reduced thresholds for emissions, etc  is the residual fraction (landfill and incineration), therefore if we reduce the amount of residual waste the costs for the municipality decrease which means that the citizen also saves money –less taxes-.

Also the treatments of residual waste are never clean; be it in a landfill where the waste will leach and pollute the soil and the water or in an incinerator where the waste will be turned into CO2, other organic and inorganic pollutants and toxic fly and bottom ashes that again need to be disposed of. In both cases there are health aspects related to the disposal of residual waste that have to be shouldered by the community and the citizens –hospitals, healthcare costs, losing of labour productivity…-.

Lastly, in order to minimise the residual part of the waste it is necessary to have regulation but also a good separate collection scheme that makes sure that no recyclables end up as residuals. This means more jobs for the community, jobs that cannot be delocalised and that bring in sustainability. Is this expensive? If we look at total costs the experience shows that it is cheaper to implement a separate collection scheme that minimises the residuals because the extra costs of separate collection are more than compensated with the reduction in the cost of residuals treatment –not to talk about hidden costs such as health, local employment…-.

Hence, also from a health and economic perspective it is always better to minimise the residual waste.

European examples of residual waste minimisation

The average waste generation in Europe is of half a ton per capita per year. Some countries generate 800kg/person and some others 350kg/person. The average recycling rate varies from country to country but if we look only to generation of residual waste –what cannot be reused or recycled- the average is around 300kg/person/year. An awful amount of waste!

Lawmakers and institutions should be looking at the amount of residual waste much more rather than focusing on separate collection and recycling only. This overcomes problems of systems where the emphasis on separate collection might produce high recycling rates but with a concurrent increase of waste arising. The parameter "minimisation of residual waste" rewards communities and programmes where separate collection is promoted in parallel with waste prevention.

In Europe there are already fantastic examples of minimisation of the residual fraction:

Flanders, Belgium

Flanders is the European champion in waste management not only because it recycles more than any other country in Europe (75%) but also because it focuses on minimising the residual waste. The average residual municipal solid waste in Flanders is around 150kg per person. 42 Flemish municipalities are below 100kg/person/year and there are two municipalities below 70Kg: Herenthout with 8.350hab generates only 59kg per person and Balen with 20.000hab 66Kg are the two leading municipalities.

But there are many others such as Aarschot (30.000hab and 84 kg) that are doing really well in their course towards sustainability.

Italy

In Italy thanks to the implementation of the door-to-door collection system 1500 municipalities are increasingly reducing their residual waste. For instance, the province of Treviso -with a population of 1 milion- generates an average of 85kg/person/year of residuals and there is a district around Udine that generates only 65kg/person.

In some small municipalities (some thousands of inhabitants) the results are extraordinary: Costigliole d’Asti thanks to achieving 82% of separate collection and the prevention policies the residual waste sent to disposal was of only 58kg/person/year. In Vilafranca d’Asti with 85% separate collection it was of 50kg/person, and in Castgnole delle Lanze with 84% separate collection they achieved the mark of 45kg/person/year!

The results of the door-to-door collection system are proving to be so successful that the region of Lazio (5,5 million inhabitants) has made it compulsory for all the municipalities.

Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain

In Spain the door-to-door collection has been implemented in more than 300 municipalities in Catalonia, Mallorca and the Basque Country and they have not only managed to increase the collection of recyclables –all above 60%- but also they have managed to reduce the generation of residual waste.

For instance in the Basque Country, the municipalities of Usurbil, Oiartzun and Hernani in one year managed to divide by four their generation of residuals thanks to the door-to-door separate collection (see graph). Currently Usurbil is at 80kg/person and Hernani and Oiartzun are approaching 100kg.

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The economics, the physics and the common-sense show that it is necessary to move towards Zero Waste – reducing the residual part of our waste to the minimum is vital to plan a future without landfill and incineration.

READ MORE - Zero Waste is about minimising the residual waste

Zero Food Waste

"Taste the Waste" - the trailer from tastethewaste.com on Vimeo.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/15693148" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/15693148">"Taste the Waste" - the trailer</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/tastethewaste">tastethewaste.com</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

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Zero Waste - when recycling is not enough

Recycling an aluminium can requires 5% of the energy & material flow than what is necessary to produce a can from virgin materials. Recycling is great! It keeps materials in use, reducing the demand for extracting and producing new materials and delaying the time before the materials become waste. Therefore it is and should be encouraged and supported… but unfortunately it is far from enough to achieve sustainability.
Sustainability is about using current resources in a way that we can pass them on to the future generations; it is about preserving the ecological capital.

According to Eurostat 75% of Europeans think that separating the waste at home is their biggest contribution to fight climate change . It is true that with source separation it is possible to increase recycling rates. However, the real recycling –turning a bottle into a new bottle-happens very rarely. In most cases the materials are down-cycled because the new material has lost purity in comparison with the old product. Plus, recycling is often quite a dirty process.

More recycling doesn’t always mean more sustainability or less emissions. In Europe we see a certain confusion among policy makers and even among the –sometimes- self-appointed green cities or communities because they recycle 50 or 60% of their waste. This is missleading. For instance, according to Eurostat Denmark recycles 41% whilst Czech Republic recycled 3% of their municipal waste. At first sight one would think that Denmark is a lot more sustainable than the Czech Republic because they recycle more. However, if we look at the absolute numbers of waste we realise that with their high recycling rates Denmark still has a residual waste fraction that amounted to 472kg/capita/year (59% of the 801kg of total anual waste that they generate) whilst Czech Republic generated only 285kg/capita/year (97% of 294kg of total waste per capita). This means that in terms of material and energy flows the Czech Republic is more sustainable than Denmark. Therefore, sustainability is not a matter of –only- recycling more but rather of generating less waste.

Europe has to move from Recycling to Sustainability

Europe has to become a Sustainable Society rather than a Recycling Society, the latter is part of the former but as far as waste is concerned, waste reduction combined with increase in material productivity are of even more importance than recycling.

Zero waste is not only about closing the loop but also about making the loop smaller. The European Union aims to decouple waste generation from economic growth but this won’t be enough. It is necessary to reduce resource consumption regardless of the economic growth. Learn to do more with less. Indeed, if the world population continues to increase, with constant consumption patterns, at a higher rate than the rate we reduce waste the unsustainability is growing and not decreasing.

Recycling is mostly good and desirable but it can’t be the reason for complacency. It is precisely for these reasons that the new approaches to resource productivity go beyond recycling to approach sustainability taking into account more indicators:
- The leading region for recycling in Europe, Flanders, has adopted a Sustainable Material Management (SMM) strategy which looks at the whole material chain in order to better phase out waste by incorporating material design and productivity approach as part of waste prevention.
Simultaneously, the Environmental Directorate of the OECD is developing guidelines for SMM that are likely to be adopted by many OECD countries in order to effectively tackle the sustainability of the materials.
- In the Netherlands there has been the Chain Approach initiative in which the authorities partner with companies in order to reduce the waste at the end of the process.

Beyond recycling!

Landfill and incineration, together with other disposal options have no place in a sustainable Zero Waste society. Recycling is here to stay but its limitations start to show themselves in those places where recycling rates are above 50%; they have realised that recycling alone can’t do the work. They need to work in waste prevention, minimisation, raise awareness, product design, proper treatment, extended producer responsibility, etc in order to reduce its material and energy consumption without reducing its living standards.

The approach might be new but what we are doing in fact is go back to some traditional usages; designing things to last (from fashion as well as from product point of view), easy to be repaired or refurbished, with non-toxic materials, easy to dismantle or tear apart, traceable, recyclable, etc… Some companies have built a success out of these traditional principles. The English brand Vitsoe has been selling solid, long-lasting and design furniture since decades and has proven that is possible to live better with less that lasts longer. One of the mottos of Vitsoe is “we see recycling as a defeat”. Now it looks like, little by little, with the materials being more scarce and difficult to recover governments and organisations are also starting to look beyond recycling.

Zero Waste is a strategy aiming at doing more with less by improving the resource productivity in order to phase out the clearest symbol of inefficiency: waste!

READ MORE - Zero Waste - when recycling is not enough

The Story of Electronics

Tired of electronic devices that break some months after having bought them? This short film from Annie Leonard explains very well the problem with designing for the dump.

The current design of electronic appliances that are hard to upgrade, easy to break and unpractical to repair to the extend that it is cheaper to buy a new product than to repair it shows that there is something wrong in the process.

Zero Waste is about good design that maximises durability, reusability, repairability and recyclability of the products.

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Zero junk mail in Europe!

The best waste is the waste that doesn’t exist. Prevention of unsolicited mail is one of many ways to prevent waste and many European countries have local prevention measures in place to stop unsolicited mail.

Sometimes placing a “STOP unsolicited mail” sticker on your mailbox it is enough to save moving 40kg of paper per year. Every kg of paper we discard means another kg of wood or recycled paper, 10 liters of water and 5Kwh of electricity with all its equivalent cost in €.

We tend to think that this junk mail we find in our mail-boxes is for free and that’s why some people don’t care. But this is false. The cost of this junk mail, like the cost of any marketing, can be found in the price of the products that is then charged to the consumer. Plus we have to pay for the treatment and disposal of the junk-mail because the producers are not responsible for it.

Prevention –first priority of the European waste hierarchy- is made of a number of small actions that will help reduce our waste generation to zero. Stopping junk mail is one of them.

In Europe there are no municipal, regional, national or European laws stopping junk mail. There are initiatives to protect privacy but none to stop unsolicited mail. Therefore it is up to the individual to stop junk mail.

If all Europe would stop unsolicited mail the EU would save 1 bilion € only in collection and treatment costs and 10 million tones of paper to the environment!

FRANCE

Putting a “STOP unsolicited mail” sticker on your mailbox in France

- saves an average of 40kg of paper per capita per year which means saving 20 to 40kg of wood, from 200 to 600kg of water, between 120 and 240 Kwh of electricity, ink with heavy metals plus additivies and colorants,

- has a cost of around 60€ -excluding distribution- that is charged to the consummers when they buy their products. Once the mail –consumed or non-consumed- is disposed of we need to add around 4€ per person to recycle or burn the paper that is again charged to the consumers.

To sum up, for a town of 60 000 inhabitants, the non-desired post represents 1200 tones/year and an expedinture of 120.000€ per year in collection and treatment costs. All this to manage something that nobody asked for...

If only 5% of the french use the “stop the pub” sticker the reduction of waste will be of 40.000 tones of paper!

UNITED KINGDOM

This is the situation in the UK:

- 17.5 billion pieces of junk mail are produced every year in the UK. This includes both addressed and unaddressed junk mail.

- To produce all this junk mail 550,000 tonnes of paper and 16.5 billion litres of water are used.

- Over the last five years the overall volume of junk mail sent out has decreased slightly, by an estimated 0.2 per cent per year.

- 650 pieces of junk mail are posted through the average British letterbox every year.

- On average 80 pieces of addressed junk mail are sent out to the 583,000 people who die every year in the UK following their death.

- 15 per cent of British households are registered with the Mailing Preference Service. Less than 0.5 per cent has opted out of receiving unaddressed junk mail delivered by Royal Mail.

-The most common source for the creation of junk mail lists is the edited electoral register. Yet, only 40 per cent of voters have opted out of being on this version of the electoral roll.

BELGIUM

In Belgium, Bruxelles Environement offers the possibility to stop the unsolicited email; anyone who desires to stop junk mail can call or send an email to Bruxelles-Environement and they send a sticker for free. This simple gesture saves time, it helps us focus on the important mail, it saves us money and it saves us moving papers up and down.

There is a lot of room for improvement, stop your unsolicited mail now!

References:
Diary of a junk mail campaigner
Stop PUB Campaign in France
Stop junk mail campaign in the UK
Stop the pub from Bruxelles-Environnement in Brussels

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Florianopolis is hosting the 7th International Conference Zero waste

Florianopolis, October 14, 2010 - The state capital of Santa Catarina was the Brazilian city chosen to host the 7th International Conference on Zero Waste, Zero Waste by the Institute in partnership with Brazil's Zero Waste International Alliance and Environmental Novociclo. On 28 and 29 October, Thursday and Friday, Florianópolis discuss the "Zero Waste Solutions for managing discarded resources, eliminating waste and pollution, creating new jobs, sustainablity and self reliance.

There are international experts, representatives of the private sector, academia, NGOs and politicians from federal, state and local sustainability programs that will discuss and present case studies of policies and projects, as well as actions that have worked in national and international scene. All events will be held at the Multipurpose Center Hotel Cacupé SESC.

Speakers include the Chair of the Zero Waste International Alliance , Richard V. Anthony and representatives from Zero Waste United Kingdom, Zero Waste South Africa, Zero Waste Italy, Zero Waste Canada, Zero Waste Philippines and a delegation from Zero Waste California as well as local experts.

Entries can be made through the site until October 25. The conference is targeted at students, researchers and professionals in Brazil and abroad in areas of design, architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture, biology, sociology, environment, education, public administration and engineering and representatives of civil society organizations that have a relationship directly or indirectly with urban planning, design, construction, management of a sustainable built environments, urban or rural.

Office Communications 7 th Conference internacionl zero waste
Juliana Guimarães
(48) 91210972
Service:
7th International Conference Zero Waste 28 and 29 October - Thursday and Friday
Multipurpose Center Hotel SESC Cacupé Florianópolis – SC
Registration and information:
www.conferencialixozero.com.br
or 55 (48) 3025-1134

Press information:

Gustavo Abdalla- (48) 3025 5899

Join the conference on facebook and twitter:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/novociclo?ref=search

http://www.twitter.com/@lixo_zero

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Example of a Zero Waste company - Interface

Ray Anderson, CEO of the biggest carpet producing company in the world Interface, explains how shifiting a billion-dollar petroleum-based industry into sustainability is not only possible but it is economically and morally rewarding.  Since the adoption of its zero-impact goals in 1995 the firm's use of fossil fuels and water, its greenhouse emissions and waste generation has fallen dramatically, while sales have increased by 2/3 and profits have doubled. Interface has diverted 74000tons of used carpets from landfills, while 1/4 of its materials are renewable and recycled.

The 400$ million Interface saved in costs avoided through the pursuit of Zero Waste has paid for all the costs of transforming its practices and facilities.

As he says in this video the Interface example: "dispels de myth of the false choice between the enfironment and the economy... if we, a petro-intensive company, can do it, anybody can. And if anybody can, it follows that everybody can".

READ MORE - Example of a Zero Waste company - Interface

Europe and organic waste - EU biowaste law needed!

Organic waste –the substance that come from living organisms- represents the biggest fraction of our municipal waste in Europe; between 30 and 50% depending on local conditions. As such, we would expect it to be taken good care of; the carbon present in all organic waste can be very good if brought back to the soils but it can be very bad if it is released to the atmosphere where it worsens climate change. More concretely, if treated properly, biowaste in Europe could improve 3 to 7% EUs depleted soils, could subsitute 10% of phosphate fertilisers, 9% of potassium fertilizers and 8% of lime fertilisers.

The European Union has a contradictory policy regarding treatment of organic waste. On one hand, in the Soil Thematic strategy it acknowledges the need to replenish the carbon-depleted soils and to increase nutrient retention and soil productivity.

On the other hand, in the renewables directive the priority is to move away from fossil fuels and contemplates biomass as a way to achieve this goal. The carbon contained in organic waste, green waste or paper is “young carbon” –as opposed the the old carbon of fossil fuels- and although all carbon, regardless of its origin, is equal when emitted to the atmosphere the EU considers burning “young”carbon as climate neutral. Hence, preference is given to burning organic waste in biomass and municipal solid waste incinerators in front of bringing the carbon back to the soils.

Finally there is the Waste Framework Directive where there is the waste hierarchy expressing the priority in treatment processes for waste: first prevention, then reuse, then recycle and compost, then energy recovery and finally disposal. Therefore, in theory, composting has priority to burning the biowaste with energy recovery as waste treatment. The waste hierarchy is supposed to be legally binding with only deviations allowed in concrete cases.

In practice, that is what counts, the situation is the following: 70% of the Eu funding for waste management goes to finance building new incinerators and the consideration of burning biomass as renewable energy allows to provide premiums for the energy produced from burning biowaste. At the same time the savings in emissions and energy provided by composting and anaerobic digestion are not rewarded with any kind of subsidy or premium.

As we can see European law is pulling carbon in opposite directions: carbon should go back to the soils but at the same time other directives and most importantly the market incentives go in the direction of releasing the carbon to the atmosphere...

How can this be right?

From an energetic point of view, studies show that composting is twice as good as burning biomass when the calorific value is low, and as good as burning biomass when calorific value is high. From a climate change point of view keeping the carbon in the soils is better than releasing it to the atmosphere. From a biodiversity point of view it is a lot more useful to build organic matter and replenish soils than, for instance, burn valuable peat.

What is the problem?

Firstly, a narrowminded short term vision that prioritises energy generation before environment, climate and future soil productivity whose benefits, albeit a lot more important, are not immediate.

Secondly, the value of of compost is low and the cost of collection and separation of biowaste is seen as too expensive. This is because repleneshing the soils, albeit recognised as very important, has no market value and because the view on waste management is not wholistic. In a wholisitic Zero Waste approach all the costs and benefits are considered. That is; the sometimes higher costs of separately collecting and managing the organics is compensated with the higher benefits of recovering value in the other waste streams thanks to the increase in its quality and the reduction in disposal costs of having a higher recycling rate.

In reality, when we look at the short and long term costs and benefits bringing the carbon back to the soils is and will be a lot cheaper than releasing it to the atmosphere.

What could be a solution?

The solution to get the priorities right would be to create a Biowaste Directive that would stablish:

- Minimum separate collection targets for biowaste
- Biowaste prevention, collection and recycling targets
- Market incentives to prioritise composting before other options
- EU standards for compost
- Harmonisation with the European soil strategy

Why is it not happening?

The issue of creating a biowaste directive has been in the pipeline since 1998 but so far the European Commission, despite the overwhelming evidence and claims from many NGOs, industry and countries such as Germany or Spain, has refused to draft such a directive.

The most likely reason for this stubborn oposition to a biowaste directive is that the EU counts on burning biowaste as a mean to achieve its targets of 20% renewable energy for 2020. In other words, the non-written decision happens to be the most important: producing energy has priority before the quality of the european soils and the future costs and sustainability of the resources management of the EU.

Yet, regardless of the financial incentives in favour of burning biowaste it is still up to the competent authorities to chose which treatment to give to their biowaste. In Germany for instance, more than 2/3 of biowaste from households is separately collected and there are plans to extend mandatory separate collection of biowaste to all municipalities. At regional level there are also initiatives; in Catalonia for instance a new law mandates to separately collect biowaste. On the other hand, countries such as France prefer to burn the biowaste mixed with the rest of the waste.

A Zero Waste strategy for Europe implies proper biowaste separate collection and a treatment that can be sustainable in the long term. Energy can be produced through anaerobic digestion but most important is the long term energy savings of bringing the carbon back to the soils and educating the population about the need to respect the cycles of nature. Zero Waste is about eliminating waste in order to share resources with the future generations and recycling organic waste is the best way to feed the future of our children.

READ MORE - Europe and organic waste - EU biowaste law needed!

Zero Waste and separate collection

No Zero Waste policy is possible without waste separation.
Waste doesn’t exist “per-se”, we create it when mixing our discards. If our discards are separated they are not waste but a resource. This is why the second step in waste management (after having done everything possible to prevent waste) is waste separation.

Waste can be separated at source –i.e. the citizen sorts out the waste- or at the end –i.e. a waste company separates the waste after it has been mixed-. When comparing both options source-separated systems not only significantly out-perform commingled collections on both material quality and diversion rate but also cost less.
For example, in order to re-melt glass into new containers, a high level of purity and colour sorting are required. Mixed or crushed glass is of no use for re-melting and is usually sold much cheaper for use as aggregate, which has no climate benefit. There is a big environmental benefit to recycling glass - each tonne of glass re-melted in the UK saves 314kg CO2 - so if possible glass should be separated by colour as it is collected. This is why the new Waste Framework Directive of the European Union requires source-separated collection except when it can be proved that it is not “technically, environmentally and economically practicable”(art.11).

But when it comes to source-separate collection there are ways to optimise the process and achieve the highest diversion rates together with the highest purity of materials. In this sense, door-to-door separate collection provides a lot higher results than separate collection in containers. The European best practices in waste management use door-to-door collection.



FLANDERS, BELGIUM

Flanders in Belgium is the region with highest separate collection and recycling rates in Europe. Most of the collection takes place door-to-door and in some districts using the Pay-as-you-Throw (PAYT) system in which citizens pay according to how much residual waste they produce.

Right now Flanders separately collects 75% of their waste and some municipalities are above 80% recycling.

ITALY

In Italy more than 1500 municipalities have adopted “door-to-door” separate collection and are already above 55% source separation. 20% of them (300 municipalities) are over 80% source separation.

Door-to-door collection takes place in all kinds of communities; the whole of Torino province (2,5 million hab.) has achieved rates above 50% separate collection. Downtown Torino in only 3 years since the start of door-to-door they have jumped from 25% to almost 60% separate collection. Other cities such as Trento (110.000hab) or Novara (100.000hab) have achieved impressive separate collection rates and even Milan is starting to use door-to-door collection.

All italian Zero Waste municipalities are using door-to-door separate collection. The first Zero Waste municipality in Italy, Capannori (50.000 hab) jumped from a separate collection of 37% in 2005 to 82% in 2008 thanks to the introduction of door-to-door separate collection.

Economic impact: The cost of moving into door-to-door system were entirely covered by the savings of recycling 16000tons of waste instead of sending it to disposal. In total a saving of 2.348.000 million € for 2007 which allowed to reduce the bill of the citizens by 20%.

Environmental impact: only looking at the effects of recycling the 6000 tones of paper and cardboard that was being burnt and now is recycled: it avoided logging 100.000 trees, the consumption of 2.85 millions of liters of water (enough to provide water to 31000hab) and the emission of 9.100 tones of CO2 (equal to the emissions of 680.000 oil barrels).

SPAIN

Following the Italian succesful initiative the first door-to-door separate collection in Spain took place in Catalonia where right now more than 100 municipalities use the door-to door system.

The system is also starting to be used elsewhere in the country, more concretely in Mallorca (30 municipalities) and the Basque Country: In the Basque Country Usurbil was the first Zero Waste municipality in the Basque Country and hence the first one to adopt door-to-door collection in 2009 and in 7 months managed to jump from 28% to 82% of separate collection and achieved 36% of waste reduction. The success has encouraged other municipalities (Hernani and Oiartzun) to join the Zero Waste strategy and source-separate waste and they are both currently recycling more than 80% of their waste whilst reducing their waste generation with measures such as home composting.
Right now in Spain the percentages of separate collection for those municipalities with door-to-door collection almost triple those with containers.

Door-to-door separate collection is not exclusive for Europe; it is happening also overseas and the Zero Waste city of San Francisco in the US is the leading city in recycling the american continent and recycles already 75% of the waste.

The Zero Waste practices from around the world prove the convenience -in environmental and social terms- and cost-efficiency of door-to-door separate collection.

READ MORE - Zero Waste and separate collection

Beverage packaging and Zero Waste

Throwing bottles and other beverage packaging in the bin? What a waste of resources and money! In a Zero Waste society all beverage container would be refilled many times before it would be recycled into a new container.

Not many decades ago beverages were generally bottled in refillable containers with deposits. Deposits are a sum of money we give as security for an item acquired for temporary use, once we give back the item we get back the money. In the last decades and years, this has changed; the trend goes towards throw-away one-way packaging. This is a very inefficient way of using resources.

There are three ways to deal with beverage packaging:
- Refilling (normally with deposit)– bottles/cans are used by the customer, transported back to the filler (producer), rinsed, refilled and transported back to the customer for use. Refillable glass bottles can be refilled over 50 times, refillable PET-bottles up to 15 times. The result is zero litter, minimum environmental impact and considerable cost savings for the municipalities.
- One-way deposit – bottles/cans are used by the customer only once, the producer can get back the materials or they will go directly to the recycling company that will produce brand new bottles which then need to be refilled and transported back to the customer. Zero litter but higher environmental impact.
- One-way without deposit – bottles/cans are used by the customer, the producer –in the best case- will pay a fee to an organisation to handle the waste or will just have nothing to do with their product once it becomes waste. The public authorities will bear the costs and a good amount of the beverages will need to be landfilled or burnt. High litter, high environmental impact but cheapest option for the producers.

Life cycle analyses (LCA) carried out by the German Environmental Protection Agency prove the significant negative environmental impacts of one-way systems regarding material (resource) consumption, energy consumption, global warming potential, acidification, ground level ozone and eutrophication compared to environmentally friendly refillables systems.

[caption id="attachment_159" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Refillable vs oneway: Annual CO2 emissions from refillables vs. one-way containers for mineral water (IFEU)"][/caption]

A recent LCA from the IFEU Institute shows that refillable bottles have 50-60% lower global warming potential than one-way beverage containers.

For instance, using only refillable bottles for all non-alcoholic beverages in Germany compared to the use of one-way packaging (100% refillables vs. 100% one-way packaging) could annually reduce the global warming emissions with 1.26 million tonnes CO2 equivalents (see figure).

The EU Packaging Directive (2004/12/EC) required recycling of beverage packaging of 50% of metal, 22,5% plastics and 60% of glass for 2008. Some member states decided to pass national legislation on deposit schemes which helped to largely accomplish the targets and reach collection rates above 80% (Germany, Scandinavia...) some others opted for other approaches without deposit which, lacking the right incentive, failed to deliver good results (Spain, France...).

Deposit systems allow for high collection rates and high quality of material which allows containers to be recycled into both food and non food applications – even bottle to bottle recycling. This makes it possible to use recycled instead of virgin material and reduces the need for extraction of new natural resources.

[caption id="attachment_158" align="alignright" width="450" caption="Environmental performance of different packaging -Global Warming Potential- (IFEU)"][/caption]

But deposit systems are not only good for the environment and an excellent tool to implement Extended Producer Responsibility, they also save lots of money to the municipalities by lowering the volume of household waste to be managed (in some cases up to 50%!), reducing the pick-up frequency, reducing the need for sorting and disposal facilities such as incinerators and landfills and by reducing the need for street cleaning. Less cost for the municipalities means less cost for the tax-payers! A win-win situation.

Good practices in Europe:

GERMANY


Germany had a well-functioning market for refillables until the 1990s when the refillable quota fell below 72% for the first time. This triggered the introduction of a mandatory one-way deposit system in 2003.
The deposit value was and is of 25 eurocent and it was applied to one-way deposit that included from non-carbonated to alcoholic mixture drinks, the only beverages excluded from the one-way deposit system being milk products, fruit and vegetable juices as well as dietetic products directly designed for babies.

Results:
The introduction of the deposit on one-way beverage packaging was a big success with 98,5% of refillable bottles being returned by consumers –highest in the world-.
The quality of the recovered material is good enough to guarantee that an old bottle will become a new bottle.
Zero littering of one-way beverages. The value of the containers has helped remove 1-2 billion one-way containers from Germany´s bins and streets.
Finally it had a good steering effect on some refillables’ markets such as beer containers.

SWEDEN
The deposit system was introduced in 1984 for cans and 1994 for PET plastic bottles for one-way containers and it has reached recovery rates of 86% for cans and 77% for PET. The recovery company Returpack announced an increase in the deposit on metal drinks cans to 11 eurocents (1SKr).

As we can see in the picture the deposit system is being implemented in more and more countries in Europe and some are considering its introduction.

To summarise; modern deposit-refund systems for one-way beverage containers are working and can be designed to operate at insignificant cost (from €0c - €1c per packaging unit) while ensuring collection and recovery rates above 80% the challenge is how to move from one-way take-back system to a system that maximises refilling.

A Zero Waste system implies eliminating waste from beverage packaging and a system of deposit for refillable bottles is the best way to reduce not only waste but also the extraction of raw materials. If Europe is to be sustainable in the future we need to advance towards a system of refillable beverage packaging, just like it always worked!

References:
- IFEU - Institut for Energy and Environmental Research. (2008). Life cycle assessment of refillable glass and PET bottles for mineral water and soft drinks.
- German Federal Government, (2008), Answer on a written question from the greens in the German Parliament
- Tomra – Deposit-Refund Systems, www.tomra.de

READ MORE - Beverage packaging and Zero Waste

New Zero Waste Group in Sicily

On August 31st it was constituted a new Zero Waste local group in Sicily.

The Zero Waste Association in Sicily declared its commitment to work for a responsible waste management system in Sicily aiming at increasing waste reduction, reuse and recycling and continuosly reduce the amount of waste send for either landfill or incineration.

The majority of municipal solid waste in Sicily being biowaste the organisation Zero Waste Sicily will focus on promoting separate collection of biowaste, composting and anaerobic digestion of this waste fraction.

For more info: http://www.rifiutizerosicilia.it/

READ MORE - New Zero Waste Group in Sicily

Phasing out single-use plastic-bags

Plastic bags, especially the single-use ones, are slowly leaving us. The good news is that this is happening, the bad news is that the process is too slow and they continue to harm our economies, health and environment.


Since their introduction in the US in 1957 they have expanded all over the world and now they can be found everywhere; oceans, rivers, mountains, fields, cities, homes... everywhere. The reason for their success was that they were cheap, light, higienic, resistant and the reason why they should be phased out is because it is not true that they are that cheap; it is just that their producers were not bearing the costs, people are. The costs of cleaning the cities, seas and fields, the costs of floods that plastic bags cause when they block the draining systems, the costs of fixing the machines blocked by plastic bags in the waste separation plants, the costs of loss of biodiversity because of death of animals by suffocation or contamination, the health costs of having more and more plastic in the food chain, the costs of tourism not wanting to come back to a country where there are more plastic bags than birds in the air... all these and many more are costs that the society is bearing and this is why the end of plastic bags is near. It doesn’t make neither economic nor environmental sense.

From the point of view of industrial design the pastic bags are a complete disaster; they are a product with a potentially high impact but whose life is very short and what’s worst is that they are absolutelly dispensable. We lived without plastic bags until some years ago and we will continue to live without plastic bags in the future.

The regulation on plastic bags around the world is increasing: in places such as China or South Africa there are outright bans on the thinnest, least durable plastic bags, in other places such as Taiwan they opted for taxes.

So, what are the experiences in Europe to reduce the consumption of plastic bags?

Ireland


The most succesful example in Europe is Ireland which introduced a “PlasTax” in 2002 –law 605/2001 – of 0,15€ per bag and managed in only 6 months to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags in a 90% and which created a revenue for the state of 19 million euros. The tax is applied in shops, supermarkets and other public places and excludes the reusable bags sold for more than 0,70€, the small bags containing bulk meat, fish, ice, fruits and vegetables and the bags in planes and ships. Infringement of the norm is sanctioned with fines starting from 1905€. The BBC reported that in three months after the ban was introduced, shops handed out 277 million plastic bags fewer than normal.

France


On the last January 1st entered into force a ban on the selling of non-biodegradable plastic-bags, the fine for violating the law is of 100€. According to a survey from WWF in 2005, 83% of the french were in favour of banning single-use plastic bags in supermarkets.

Denmark


As part of a larger packaging tax introduced in 1994, Denmark taxes plastic bags. The stated aim is to promote the use of reusable bags. However, the tax is paid by retailers when they purchase bags, rather than by shoppers, yielding less dramatic results than the Irish PlasTax, which charges consumers directly for each bag used. Still, consumption of paper and plastic bags has declined by 66%.

Spain

The region of Andalucia has  recently approved the first-ever in Spain tax (5 eurocents) on single-use plastic bags to be introduced in 2011. With a population of 8.3 million people Andalucia could raise 100 million euros next year, and twice as much when the tak will be doubled in 2012. Other autonomous regions in Spain such as Catalonia have targets to reduce single-use plastic bags but no measures -tax or ban- as to how to make it happen.





In other countries such as Germany, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands or Hungary the big supermarkets charge for the plastic bags.
Several initiatives and campaigns are taking place in different parts of Europe in order to push the authorities to act against plastic bags. There is no concrete EU policy regarding plastic bags.

On the 3rd of July 2010 took place the first International Bag Free Day, coordinated by Fundació Catalana de Prevenció de Residus i Consum and GAIA.

If you happen to know other campaigns or policies against plastic bags in Europe please let us know.

Phasing out plastic bags in Europe and replacing them with reusable bags is part of a Zero Waste Strategy in Europe; it reduces waste, it reduces costs, it promotes sustainability and is good for the environment and our landscapes.
To conclude we leave you with the video of the life of a plastic bag that is used to push the ban on plastic bags in California:

READ MORE - Phasing out single-use plastic-bags

Zero Waste practices to reduce waste in the milk and dairy market in Europe

“One litter of milk is produced somewhere, then it has to travel to be packed in often unsustainable packaging hundreds of km away then it needs to travel again to a supermarket so that the consumer can buy it. After short period of use the packaging ends up in the waste bin. Milk without taste, expensive for the consumer, impoverishes the producers and it harms the environment.” This is unsustainable.

What about “One litter of milk is produced in a farm which is some km away from the milk-machine from which the consumer can refill a reusable recipient, enjoy the better tasting product and pay less money whilst the milk producer makes more profit and the environment suffers from less CO2 emissions and waste. A win-win situation for the producer, the consumer, the market and the environment.” Now, this is sustainable.

Since some years all around Europe the milk producers got organised to deliver the milk directly to the consumer in a move that is good for the consumers, is good for the producers and it goes in the direction of Zer Waste. Some examples:

In Italy
The Italian Zero Waste Communities have been in the forefront of the implementation of the milk automat machines, now the system is spreading everywhere in Italy, mainly fostered by:
• the price issue - (remarkably) lower price for consumers, higher income for farmers,
• much less waste, hence less economic and environmental costs –for the households, for the municipalities and for the producers,
• more healthy milk for everybody - and more tasty too (not being neither skimmed nor homogenised the milk fat is remarkably more tasty,
• the so called "zero km" campaign, launched by farmers' associations and the "slow-food" movement in order to support local production/consumption of food and typical local productions (quite a few restaurants are now offering "zero km" lists, and this is becoming a "trendy" feature of restaurants)

The technology used in Italy can be found here.
The success in waste reduction has pushed the ZW municipalities to install “Water Houses” –for both still and sparkling water- next to the milk machines where the citizens can get water for free without generating the waste that the bottled water produces.

In France:
Distrilait is the homologated distributor of milk and so far 85 milk distributors have been installed in France.
It is possible to bring your own bottle or recipient and fill as much as you want and if you forget your bottle, the automat has an integrated dispenser bottles.
You can see a video –in French- here.
Every milk machine costs 50,000 euros and the milk is sold 1 € per litter, that is 2 or 3 times more than the price given to the farmers by the big supermarkets.

In Slovakia

The system of milk automats was implemented in 2009 as a result of the crisis that hit the milk producers because of the extremely low prices they were paid for their product. These pushed some milk producers to opt for direct selling to consumers. In the beginning the machines were subsidised but the success was such that now there are more than 100 machines in operation and they don’t need subsidies anymore. To see a map of the milk machines in Slovakia click here.

In the Czech Republic
In the Czech Republic there is  similar success to the one in Slovakia which caused that the producers of the packaging of the industrial milk Tetrapack –which is very hardly recyclable and goes against waste prevention- launched accusations against the milk from these automat machines. Luckily the machines continue to operate.

In Spain


There are machines working in the Basque Country, Navarra, Asturias, Sevilla, Madrid and Catalonia. For instance, in Catalonia there are hundreds of machines distributing fresh milk coordinated by LletFresca.com.


Other Spanish regions such as Castilla y León have encountered more problems but they are moving ahead.

Many other countries such as Slovenia, The Netherlands or Switzerland have implemented the idea with huge success.

Here we have another example of how a Zero Waste practice can be good for the environment and at the same time be also good for the consumers and producers and hence for the sustainability of our economies.

READ MORE - Zero Waste practices to reduce waste in the milk and dairy market in Europe