RETHINKING WASTE

"One man's waste is another man's treasure"

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What is waste? Is it really worthless? Or is it a matter of perception?

The word waste comes from the old Latin word "vastus" which means unoccupied or uncultivated, and from which we get other words such as devastate and ravage.

Waste is something that is unwanted or unusable to a person, group or organization. One man's waste is another man's treasure. For example, petroleum was considered a major waste when found on land that could be used for agriculture or habitation. Thus, prior to the late 19th century, petroleum had a negative value. If one discovered petroleum on their property, they had to pay someone else to get rid of the petroleum, because it lowered the property value and the utility of the property. That is until the early 20th century when petroleum was discovered to be useful as fuel for automobiles. Similarly diamonds were considered waste rocks till uses were found for it as gems and cutting tools. Thus, waste is something for which no use has been found, yet.

Given the nature of human ingenuity, all waste is just waiting for uses to be found and applied commercially (yes, even things like excrement, garbage, desert sand and nuclear waste). Thus, waste is just a state of mind. Humans are able to consider somethings as wastes, as unwanted. This mindset can be changed. We can get rid of this notion of waste from our minds, our conversations and our actions.

Zero Waste the Concept

In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Everything (excrement or products) discarded by one organism is used up by others as food, raw materials or shelter. Can humans get to the level of sophistication of nature?

Yes, we can. We can develop technologies that can help us get to a point where no waste is left behind and all things are reused.

Zero waste is the condition where we have no wastage at all. Circular economy is the state where every object, service or thing is designed in such a way that it has a prolonged life, returned back to be reused, recycled or repurposed. Both Zero-Waste and Circular Economy are a journey and a destination, they are a daily process that we can apply in our lives as individuals and in the operations of an organization or business.

How to Achieve Zero Waste?

Step 1

In order to apply Zero-Waste and Circular Economy thinking into our daily lives, we need to start with taking stock of our wastes. A helpful exercise may be to create a quick alphabetic list. One can start by listing things, such as Apples to Zucchinis. Or, we can categorize things into groups or classifications, e.g., from apartments to energy to food to money to opportunities to people to time to vehicles to water to zones.

We also need to create sub-categories. For e.g. when it comes to energy, there are various forms of energy that we see everyday, such as light, electricity, fuels (for cooking, for automobiles), heat (and cooling), motion, and sound. Fuels release energy from combustion, and we use fuels for cooking, lighting (candles), heating, and for running generators, automobiles, and airplanes

Step 2

The second step is to identify how those things above are being wasted, misused, overused, or unappreciated. For example heat is often overlooked because it is ubiquitous. Heat is released by our own bodies, and now there are thermoelectric devices that can harvest body heat for powering small electronics. All machines produce heat during their operation. so can you imaging how much energy is wasted?All machines produce heat during their operation. e.g. Some espresso makers make use of waste heat to heat the cup, which is a very clever way to capture heat that would be otherwise wasted, thereby even increasing the electric efficiency of the machine. So, you can now imagine how energy is being wasted around us.

Motion is produced by the action of energy on objects, and we may not realize the waste of energy in the form of motion, e.g. elevators and escalators running unoccupied, or a fan left running in an unoccupied room. Thus, occupancy or proximity sensors that cut-off power to these machines when unoccupied save considerable amounts of electric power.

Step 3

The third step is to then find a way to reuse them efficiently or to find some person or organization that can take the wasted object and use them. This process of handing over our "wastes" to another person or organization for reuse can be done for free or for monetary gain. My money is on the latter. However, it does bring us joy to give away things we do not need to those who would place great value on them. This is zero-waste and circular economy in action.

This also is the step where you can to be creative, innovative and think outside the box to create a use for the "waste". Who knows, you may end up being the "innovator" or "entrepreneur" of the year.

Next time you look at something that you think is waste, take a pause, google 3 uses of the object you thought is a waste and you will be amazed at what you may find. I can guarantee you that you will find more than 3 ways it can be utilised. Zero-waste-thinking is ensuring that we find use for everything, giving it a second life and putting it back in the circle of life. We always did practice this in the past till consumerism struck us. Let us get back to our roots, let us get back to nature.