Cities are not assortments of disconnected, unrelated parts working independently. Cities are systems — living organisms of life and economy. However, one key element of the city system is often forgotten: waste. All systems create byproducts that must be disposed of or otherwise dealt with; however, to date, waste — especially solid waste — has not been thought of as an integral part of the overall community system. As a result, advances in the field of waste management and sustainability have been relatively slow to arrive.
Bryan Staley, a solid waste expert and head of the Environmental Research and Education Foundation (EREF), says this lack of progress starts with an absence of data. “One of the long-standing complaints in the solid waste industry is that nobody knows how big it is,” says Staley, referring to the amount of solid waste that is generated and processed. “This is one of those key city utilities that are not really metered very well. The waste system needs to be brought up to the level at which water and electricity are managed.”
The way waste is typically handled makes measurement and analysis difficult. Water and electricity provisioning is highly centralized, but waste collection and processing is anything but. For example, residential waste is typically handled by city programs, but private companies are largely responsible for dealing with commercial waste. This makes the gathering and analysis of waste data incredibly difficult and it has had a chilling effect on efforts to make waste a more sustainable part of the city system — it’s hard to know what needs fixing, not to mention where to start fixing it. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it,” says Staley. If more and better information on waste were available, advances in waste fi cant benefi ts for the city system. The potential exists for waste to be transformed from a we think about waste may be the key to promoting more efficient use of it. “We think there are a lot of ways to use waste as a resource,” says Jennifer Killinger of the American Chemistry Council.
“Waste is becoming a resource as we move from a linear to a closed-loop model of managing discards,” adds Bruce Parker, former head of the Environmental Industries Association. “The goal is to find the highest environmental and best use of waste. Waste should not be wasted."
Mixed Signals
Slow progress in waste sustainability can also be traced to a disconnect between waste policy and waste economics. “When you look at the fees that are charged to dispose of waste, the cheapest option, by leaps and bounds, is still the landfi ll,” says Staley. “Cities and counties are strapped for cash. Even though they want to do the right thing, it’s so expensive to go with greener options that they’re forced to go to the cheaper option, which is the landfill. Policies can help that.”
What kinds of policies? Some countries in Europe discourage landfill use by taxing trash waste, which motivates citizens to reuse or recycle what they might otherwise throw out. In the U.S., where taxation is generally less popular, the use of positive incentives — subsidies, tax breaks and so on — may hold more promise. Either way, resolving the discrepancy between waste policy and waste economics is an important step.
Research funding is one more incentive, but it has been underutilized to this point. “You can probably count on one hand the number of solid waste projects that have gotten funded through the National Science Foundation over the past decade,” says Staley. “While my organization, EREF, is the largest source of funding for solid waste research in the U.S., the amount of funding we provide pales in comparison to water and wastewater research.” As a consequence, solid waste research has lagged behind the pace of inquiry in many other fields.
Progress might be quicker if government and private industry begin a conversation on their roles in this changing landscape of converting waste into energy, recyclables and other uses. According to Bruce Parker, “These emerging conversion technologies involve major financing, construction and operating cost risks, and for a public-private partnership to be successful the risk must be accepted by whichever side can manage it best and perhaps shared in some cases. Local government and their partners have a lot of work to do.”
Wastewater in the Spotlight
Making waste a more sustainable part of the city system means more than dealing with trash and recyclables efficiently — it also means harnessing the potential of wastewater. For example, some entities are focusing on the benefi ts of extracting phosphorus from this water. Phosphorus is a vital nutrient and an ingredient in many medicines, cleaning agents and artificial fertilizers, but worldwide reserves are dwindling fast — some estimates predict the supply will un out by the end of the 21st century. Better phosphorus extraction has a two-fold benefit. First, it allows the phosphorus to be used repeatedly, slowing the rate of depletion. Secondly, since too much phosphorus in wastewater can damage ecosystems, extracting it helps preserve the surrounding environment, improving the sustainability of the city system.
Innovations in wastewater management go far beyond phosphorus, of course. Some communities are exploring the use of decentralized wastewater treatment plants, situated closer to the direct sources of wastewater (as opposed to using centralized plants and piping the wastewater in from afar). This can reduce the cost and environmental impact of building sewer systems large enough to reach outlying areas. Additionally, the use of satellite water reclamation results in a smaller carbon footprint, and creates a ready local supply of potable water for the non-urban areas where the plants are located, increasing environmental and economic sustainability.
Solid Steps
While major innovations in waste management have been slow to arrive, many cities and municipalities are pushing forward by implementing relatively small, but pragmatic, changes. Such changes may not be revolutionizing the solid waste industry, but they are having a practical impact.
Increasing in popularity, for example, is the concept of “single-stream” recycling — using just one bin for all recyclable material, instead of multiple bins for each different type of recyclable. The material is sorted out at a central facility rather than at the pickup site, which results in a higher overall recovery rate of sustainable material.
Another encouraging step is in the realm of waste transport. More cities are looking to retire their heavy-polluting waste transport vehicles and replacing them with more environmentally friendly models. Doing so could help shrink waste management’s environmental footprint quickly. By extension, it also improves the health and vitality of the city system.
Cleaner trucks lead to cleaner air, meaning healthier people. Healthier people are happier, more productive people. Again, everything is connected in the city system.For the large amount of waste that inevitably ends up in landfills anyway despite composting, recycling, environmentally friendly waste transport and other initiatives, one intriguing option is to convert it into sources of energy.
“There are a lot of plastics and other materials that cannot be economically recycled right now,” says Warren Robinson, of the American Chemistry Council. “The environmentally and recover that waste for more energy.” Emerging technologies can potentially turn this waste into electrical energy, synthetic fuels and types of usable gases.
Overall, sustainable waste management is still in its early stages, and while major progress is yet to come, promising steps can be taken right now. Any progress on solid waste management is preferable than inertia. Small steps are worth taking to fill the gap between the present and the future, when those big leaps in technological, political and economic progress are realized. And these steps all lead toward the same end: an improved city, a better system.
