Households in England and Wales will no longer have to pay to get rid of waste created by DIY activities under new plans set out by the government on Monday.
At the moment, some local authorities are allowed to charge for the removal of waste such as plasterboard, bath units and bricks, but the proposed changes outlined in a technical consultation would stop this.
The move, which is part of a fresh attempt to crack down on fly-tipping, could save consumers up to £10 per individual item, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.
The government banned backdoor charges for individuals disposing of household rubbish at waste centres in 2015. However, about a third of local authorities still charge for certain types of DIY waste, applying rules to residents designed for construction waste.
The environment minister Jo Churchill said: “When it comes to fly-tipping, enough is enough. These appalling incidents cost us £392m a year and it is time to put a stop to them. I want to make sure that recycling and the correct disposal of rubbish is free, accessible and easy for householders. No one should be tempted to fly-tip or turn to waste criminals and rogue operators.”
Local authorities handled 1.13m fly-tipping incidents in 2020-21, during the Covid-19 pandemic, up 16% on the year before.
New council grants totalling £450,000 will be awarded to selected authorities to help them fund a range of projects to catch fly-tippers in action or deter them from dumping waste in the first place.
Projects include the use of covert and overt CCTV cameras at hotspot locations; educational programmes to influence behaviour change; and a “no bags on the street” policy to prevent rubbish collections outside business premises.
Buckinghamshire council also plans to use artificial intelligence at fly-tipping hotspots, such as rapid deployment cameras and automatic number-plate recognition. These tools link the vehicles of fly-tipping suspects to the disposed-of items in real time, allowing investigating officers to track down culprits quickly.
The other councils set to receive the grant are Durham, Newham, Eastleigh Borough, Stevenage, Winchester, Dover, Thanet, Telford and Wrekin, and Basingstoke and Deane.
The government is also considering measures to make manufacturers of the most-dumped items – such as furniture and mattresses – responsible for the costs of disposing of waste created by their products.
Jacob Hayler, the executive director of the Environmental Services Association (ESA), said he was pleased by the range of measures announced by the government to deter “this deeply antisocial, criminal behaviour”.
He said: “In addition to helping individuals recycle their household waste materials at HWRCs [household waste and recycling centres], of particular importance is stopping this material from falling into the hands of organised waste criminals, leading to larger-scale fly-tipping, which is why the ESA also strongly supports digital waste-tracking and reform of the licensing regime for carriers, brokers and dealers of waste material.”
Digital waste-tracking involves those handling rubbish recording information from the point the waste is produced to the stage it is disposed of, recycled or reused. It is hoped this will make it easier for regulators to detect illegal waste activity.
Marcus Gover, the chief executive of the sustainability charity Wrap, said: “Minimising waste is central to this, and the introductions of grants to reduce fly-tipping across England and Wales are necessary to help prevent the continual environmental cost of this illegal activity.”
Waitrose has partnered with Muller to scrap coloured caps on milk bottles as part of a plastic recycling trial.
The supermarket chain will sell Muller products with clear caps on their bottles, which can be recycled into food-grade packaging, unlike the usual blue, green and red lids.
The businesses estimate that this could increase the availability of recyclable plastic, high-density polyethylene (rHDPE) on the market by 1,560 tonnes a year.
The trial will take place at all 331 Waitrose stores between April 4 and 30, following a successful in-house trial, they added.
Research conducted by Muller found that the majority of shoppers support the change, with 80% telling the brand they would choose a bottle with a recyclable clear cap over a coloured cap.
Liam McNamara, commercial director at Muller Milk & Ingredients, said: “Everyone is thinking more about what they buy, the nutritional benefits, the value it represents and the packaging used.
“We want to be the partner of choice for our customers, we recognise the commitments they are making in this area, and following a successful trial period, then this is another step we can offer.
“As the first dairy company in the UK to trial clear caps on fresh milk, we are working hard to innovate and lead in issues that are not only important for customers, but for consumers too.”
Karen Graley, packaging innovation lead at Waitrose, said: “As food businesses, we need to do more to protect our planet from unnecessary plastic waste so we’re delighted to be involved in this trial.”
What started as a weekend passion project between friends, Thryft is now established as Singapore’s first sustainable online bookstore.
Thryft is an online site that allows people to trade in second-hand books in exchange for credits that can be spent on the platform. A group of students, Eddie Lim, Choy Jia Yu and Tan Ye Kai conceived the idea while studying at the National University of Singapore (NUS). The founders hope that by encouraging people to resell books and buy pre-loved ones, it will minimise waste. Old books gain a new lease of life while avid readers can create space for exciting new reads. Thryft has resold over 12,000 second-hand books since it began operating two years ago.
The platform uses algorithms to determine the trade-in value based on the current first-hand retail price, popularity and market saturation. Thryft’s community commitment operates on a 10, 50, and 100 per cent model. Ten per cent of their profits go to non-profit organisations on a quarterly basis to support tackling urgent environmental and social issues. Fifty per cent of their profits are donated to various social organisations. Non-profit organisations are able to list their books on the platform at no cost and take back 100 per cent of the profits from what they manage to sell.
Eco-Business sat down with the three bookworms to learn more about Thryft, their personal experiences in running a business, and the advice they would give to other budding entrepreneurs looking to make a name in the sustainability sphere.
Eddie: To add on to that, I don’t think many people know that we’re still students. Customers can be very demanding because they expect a full-time team to be behind Thryft. Even still, we try to be closely aligned to professional standards.
The Thryft team. Image: Thryft
With the surge of e-books in recent years, why did you choose to focus on physical books?
Ye Kai: If you look at the statistics in the past five years or so, after the initial surge of e-books in 2014-2016, we saw a steady decline and instead it was more ‘trendy’ to have print books. In the United Kingdom alone, 200 million physical books were sold last year. But, where do all the books end up? That was an important question we wanted to answer.
Eddie: There’s also an alarming statistic that every Singaporean household has an average of 52 books. With over 1.3 million households, that’s over 68 million books just lying around. So what can we do about all these resources? According to data, the trend is still increasing. These are key questions that we are trying to address.
What are your thoughts on the sustainability scene in Singapore?
Jia Yu: There’s a growing urgency where people are beginning to realise there is a need to reduce their plastic usage. People are also looking for more sustainable options when they shop. Especially in the past three years, there are more brands offering sustainable clothing or household items. There are more secondhand stores too. It’s encouraging to see this mindset gain popularity.
Do you think that the Asian/Singaporean stigma towards second-hand items is changing?
Eddie: Unfortunately, there aren’t many statistics or a lot of data in Singapore. However, the largest online second-hand fashion retailer in the United States, ThredUp, has said that it is outgrowing the traditional retail market by 11 times. There’s a general acceptance of second-hand items, particularly by millennials who are slowly reaching the stage where they have purchasing power. In that sense, the trend is likely to continue. Although there aren’t many robust reports available here, there are many sustainability-focused businesses popping up, so it definitely carries on in Singapore as well.
What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs looking to start a sustainable organisation like Thryft?
Jia Yu: One piece of advice would be to think about systems. Everything is interlinked and for us, because we’re trying to facilitate the movement of second-hand goods, our focus is placed on building a system that works for people. For entrepreneurs looking to start their own company, they should explore how their ideas can link systems together too.
You have to see meaning in what you do too. Owning a business is often difficult, and it’s very easy to get lost in all the operational or logistic challenges. Our motivation is making a circular economy of books within Singapore and Southeast Asia, as well as opening up opportunities for people who don’t have access to second-hand books. It helps push us and keeps us focused on what we’re really doing here.
Ye Kai: My advice is to be aware that you’re in it for the long term. Building a business doesn’t take one or two years, it’s more of a 10 year or more journey. A lot of people our age start with weekend projects just to see where it goes, but it’s important to keep the end in mind. When it shifts from a passion project to an actual business, that is when things get hard.
What does 2022 look like for Thryft?
Eddie: We started having monthly book fairs this year, but because of the pandemic it had to be switched from physical to virtual. Now that things have settled down, we are excited about hosting fairs again next year.
We also recently received the SG Eco Fund grant to run a sustainability fair. The idea is to host it a convention centre where like-minded vendors can set up booths and customers can bring items from their homes to trade them in. It’s a fun way for people who are quite new to sustainability to dip their toes in and try it out.
How did the idea for Thryft come about?
Eddie: I previously worked at a big data and Artificial Intelligence-related startup and I would get at least two cups of coffee every day. Three months into the job, I realised I had amassed over 100 cups. Just the thought of all those cups struck something in me; that an individual can make such a significant impact on the environment. That was when I started getting concerned about sustainability issues.
Our school has a small Facebook group where students can list and sell second-hand textbooks within the community. It got me thinking about what made this idea work compared to my own personal experience on public platforms (like Carousell) which are branded as marketplaces for buyers and sellers. The difference lies in the fact that all us students stay in the same student accommodation which offers great convenience. This allows us to move lower value goods easily and efficiently.
Trying to replicate this on large online marketplaces introduces inconveniences such as location and price negotiation. So, I began brainstorming ways to change the process of moving our pre-loved books quicker. By using data, we have created an algorithm that helps us arrive at a fair value for these second-hand books. This idea started out as a weekend project with friends, where we tested the first version of the algorithm to see how well we predicted prices. It continued from there.
Jia Yu: I started a thrift shop with a few friends when I started college in 2019 and we operated on a point system, whereby people could trade-in clothing for points depending on the quality of the donated item. One of the disadvantages I observed was that it was logistically and operationally challenging. For example, it is difficult to determine the actual value of the clothing, so even if someone traded in a high-end luxury item, it would be priced the same as a cheaper garment. When Eddie came to me with his algorithm, we realised we could help each other out.
What are some challenges you have faced growing this company?
Ye Kai: Aside from the obvious technical aspects that we had to learn, I would say our biggest challenge was just juggling work, school, and personal life. We are all still full-time students, and we started Thryft in Year 2. Trying to build a successful business forced us to learn how to better prioritise our responsibilities.
California will soon enact the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the US in January, an effort designed to dramatically cut down on organic waste in landfills and reduce the state’s methane emissions.
When food scraps such as banana peels and leftover veggies and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Organic material such as food and yard waste makes up a fifth of the state’s methane emissions and half of everything in California landfills, according to CalRecycle.
California plans to start converting food waste into compost or energy in order to avoid these emissions, becoming the second state to do so after Vermont launched a similar program last year.
“This is the biggest change to trash since recycling started in the 1980s,” said Rachel Wagoner, the director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery.
Most California residents will be required to toss excess food into green waste bins rather than the trash. Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost or use it to create biogas, an energy source that is similar to natural gas.
A truck unloads organic waste to be used for composting at a facility in Woodland, California. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Recycling food waste “is the single easiest and fastest thing that every single person can do to affect climate change”, Wagoner said.
The effort reflects growing recognition about the role food waste plays in damaging the environment. Up to 40% of food in the US is wasted, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
A handful of states and countries, including France, have passed laws requiring grocery stores and other large businesses to recycle or donate excess food to charities, but California’s program targets households and businesses. In 2016, California passed a law aimed at reducing methane emissions by significantly cutting down on discarded food.
Starting in January, all cities and counties that provide trash services are supposed to have food recycling programs in place and grocery stores must donate edible food that otherwise would be thrown away to food banks or similar organizations.
“There’s just no reason to stick this material in a landfill, it just happens to be cheap and easy to do so,” said Ned Spang, faculty lead for the Food Loss and Waste Collaborative at the University of California, Davis.
Vermont, home to 625,000 people compared with California’s nearly 40 million, is the only other state that bans residents from throwing their food waste in the trash. Under a law that took effect in July 2020, residents can compost the waste in their yards, opt for curbside pick up or drop it at waste stations. Seattle and San Francisco have similar programs.
Students discard their uneaten lunch into a food waste can at an elementary school in Connecticut. Photograph: Dave Zajac/AP
Under California’s new law, the state must cut organic waste in landfills by 75% from 2014 levels by 2025, or from about 23m tons to 5.7m tons.
Most local governments will allow homeowners and apartment dwellers to dump excess food into yard waste bins, with some providing countertop containers to hold the scraps for a few days before taking it outside. Some areas can get exemptions for parts of the law, such as rural locations where bears rummage through trash cans.
The food waste will go to facilities for composting or for turning it into energy through anaerobic digestion, a process that creates biogas that can be used like natural gas for heating and electricity.
But only a fifth of California’s composting facilities may accept food waste, and they face a strict permitting process to take food waste alongside traditional green waste such as leaves.
The state also set a 2025 goal of diverting 20% of food that would otherwise go to landfills to feed people in need. Supermarkets must start donating their excess food in January and hotels, restaurants, hospitals, schools and large event venues will start doing so in 2024. The donation part of the law will contribute toward a federal goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030.
Davis, California, already has a mandatory food recycling program. Joy Klineberg puts coffee grounds, fruit rinds and cooking scraps into a metal bin labeled “compost” on her countertop. When preparing dinners, she empties excess food from the cutting board into the bin.
Every few days, she dumps the contents into her green waste bin outside, which is picked up and sent to a county facility. Unpleasant countertop bin smells haven’t been a problem, she said.
Joy Klineberg lives in Davis, California, where residents are already required to recycle their food waste. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
“All you’re changing is where you’re throwing things, it’s just another bin,” she said. “It’s really easy, and it’s amazing how much less trash you have.”
Implementing similar programs in bigger cities is more challenging.
Los Angeles and San Diego, the state’s two most populous cities, which together account for about one of every eight Californians, are among those that won’t have their programs ready for all households next month.
That’s because it takes time to buy the necessary equipment, such as green waste bins for households that don’t already have them for yard waste and to set up facilities to take the material. Trash collection fees will go up in many places.
CalRecycle also wants to focus more on education and less on punishment. Governments can avoid penalties by self-reporting to the state by March if they don’t have programs in place and outlining plans for starting them. Cities that refuse to comply could eventually be fined up to $10,000 a day.
Ken Prue, the deputy director of San Diego’s environmental services department, said the city put nearly $9m in this year’s budget to buy more waste bins, countertop containers and trucks to haul the additional waste.
Prue hopes San Diego residents will quickly realize the importance of recycling food waste after the program starts next summer.
“Hopefully before they know it, it becomes second nature,” he said.
You will get six cents for every 1kg of paper deposited at a recycling machine.
That is the carrot dangled at 78 machines in Housing Board estates islandwide, under a new initiative that aims to bring green living to all 15 towns managed by the People’s Action Party.
The Action for Green Towns drive will see other measures being implemented by 2025, including energy-saving smart sensors in common areas.
Details of how these efforts will be rolled out were announced on Saturday (Dec 4) by the PAP at Block 68 Geylang Bahru, one of 58 locations which already have paper recycling machines.
The remaining 20 will be set up at various locations with high residential footfall such as shopping malls and markets by the end of December.
Mr Lim Biow Chuan, coordinating chairman for PAP town councils, said: “What you will see is that people bring the newspaper down and dump it at (bins at) the void deck. That’s a fire hazard and we will have to see whether a karung guni man comes and collects it.
“So it’s either dump at the dustbin and not earn anything or you can bring it (to the machines), do your part to recycle and earn some money in the process.”
Launched in May, the Action for Green Towns initiative will see MPs from each of the 15 PAP town councils work closely with residents to support sustainability.
The paper recycling machines each aims to recycle one tonne of paper every month.ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
Dr Wan Rizal Wan Zakariah, an MP for Jalan Besar GRC who chairs the Action for Green Towns task force, said ambassadors will be deployed at the recycling machines to share more about the sustainability push with residents.
For now, the task force is focusing on raising awareness among residents and engaging with stakeholders such as sustainability experts.
Dr Wan Rizal said: “We are trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone to come on board before we move further.”
Future initiatives could include the greening of lift lobbies and corridors.
To enhance energy efficiency, smart sensors will be installed in common areas with lower traffic, such that when no motion is detected, the lights can be dimmed or turned off.
This measure is expected to reduce up to 62 million kWh of energy usage by 2025, equivalent to the energy used by 14,452 four-room HDB homes in a year.
The Action for Green Towns drive will see other measures being implemented by 2025 including energy-saving smart sensors in common areas. ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
Meanwhile, the paper recycling machines each aims to recycle one tonne of paper every month.
This will save 17 trees from being cut to obtain the pulp needed to produce one tonne of paper.
Civil servant Lau Chun Wai, 41, a resident of Block 65 that is a three-minute walk from the recycling machine at Block 68, said it is more convenient for him to recycle paper products now.
“During the pandemic, when we work from home or shop online, we would have accumulated paper products like cardboard or documents. In the offices, cleaners can help to clear the trash or we would shred them.
“But at home, we don’t have a shredder, so having such machines can help us recycle,” he noted.
When people think about ways to help the environment, encourage biodiversity and decrease greenhouse gases, they don’t usually think about the impact of food waste. And yet food waste is responsible for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Producing food for a growing global population is a complex challenge with a lot of negative environmental consequences, so food waste creates unnecessary strain on our fragile environment.
I was part of a recent research project with the UK Global Food Security programme, which explores ways to cut food waste. Our key findings and suggestions address waste throughout the food system – that includes all the processes, people and infrastructure involved in getting food from farm to fork. We found that cutting food waste needs cooperative action from all of us – businesses, policymakers and individuals. The most commonly wasted foods are fresh fruit and vegetables, bread and baked goods, and leftovers. Products with short shelf lives, such as meat and dairy, are also prone to be wasted.
Domestic food waste declined in the UK dramatically during the early pandemic lockdowns, with 30% using up more leftovers, but waste levels are increasing again as people go out more and have less time to cook.
Here are five things you can do:
1) Set your fridge to below 5℃: This can help increase the shelf life of many of the most commonly wasted foods, including fruit, vegetables and dairy products. About 90% of milk waste happens in the home – this adds up to nearly 500 million pints annually in the UK. Setting your fridge to the right temperature can save 50,000 tonnes of milk waste every year. Yet many of us don’t know how to adjust our fridge temperature, or how best to store food.
WRAP, a charity working on cutting waste, has guidance on understanding and adjusting fridge temperatures, and the best ways to stop milk and dairy products being wasted.
2) Single-use plastics: Many of us are seeking to decrease the amount of single-use plastics in our lives, and in our shopping baskets. This is good – but often these plastics and packaging keep food fresh for longer. Fortunately, there are significant developments towards a post-plastic world. Scientists are working on developing methods of treating and storing food that can extend its shelf life. For now, if you’re going to ditch the plastic wrap, make sure you store food in reusable containers in the fridge to maintain freshness.
3) Dish up smaller portions: This results in up to 20% less food waste If you have leftovers, make sure you enjoy them, and don’t forget about them.
The reasons behind domestic food waste are complex. Many of us put our leftovers in the fridge, then forget about them. Fortunately, there are many ways to manage our fridge contents effectively and decrease food waste. These range from apps, to the humble Post-it note, or pen. Labelling leftovers reminds us when they went in – and when they need to be eaten by. Try and freeze meat, dairy and bread if they are close to spoiling – this will extend their life.
4) Buy directly from local suppliers: Our food systems and supply chains are incredibly complex. This complexity, as well as contracts which tend to favour larger suppliers, leads to high levels of food loss and waste. In contrast, buying directly from local suppliers results in less waste and keeps money in the local economy. It’s possible to buy almost anything – fruit, veg, bread, meat, dairy – directly from suppliers. Support a local business, eat quality food, and decrease waste.
Dairy products are high on the list of foods that are often wasted. gbellphotos/Shutterstock
5) Help out at your local food bank: Suppliers often have awkward quantities of fresh food that is damaged and can’t be sold. They are more than happy to get this to a local group that prepares meals or distributes extra food surplus directly to the public – and apps like Too Good To Go are helping restaurants in the UK to do this.
But logistical challenges – and costs – mean that this food often still goes to waste. Food banks often have an excess of tinned and processed food – and a limited amount of fresh food available for people who need it. Let your local redistribution hub know that you’re available to help pick up some spare food and transport it to a nearby redistribution centre.
Food waste is a complex problem that won’t be solved by individual actions alone. Supermarkets are rising to the challenge of shrinking their environmental footprint. But we all need to do what we can to decrease food loss and waste, at the household level and beyond.
In a secret location in an industrial area in western Sydney, a test strip of asphalt is being laid.
But this is no ordinary road.
The 50-metre strip stretching out into the hot afternoon sun is held together by an unusual material. The gooey cellulose that binds a road surface together is usually imported from overseas, but here it has been sourced locally: from the paper, plastic, lids and liners of coffee cups that were once destined for landfill.
A test strip of road which incorporates coffee cups from the Simply Cups program. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
For months now, heavily loaded trucks have rolled back and forth over this asphalt and the surface has held up without cracking. The product has been put through a machine test that flexes it until it fails. So far, it has done everything a road surface is expected to do, and then some, says John Kypreos, director of State Asphalt Services. “It’s a better performance product than what we were producing before.”
Exactly how much of the asphalt was once part of a takeaway coffee cup is top secret, according to Kypreos. Ask too many questions and you’re hit with the same answer: that’s the “secret herbs and spices”.
But the western Sydney asphalt manufacturer is on the cusp of rolling out the first roads in Australia surfaced with recycled waste from coffee cups, as part of a collaboration with recycling program Simply Cups. The unusual partnership was brokered by the organisation Closed Loop, which looks for opportunities to achieve what’s known as “net-positive waste”.
Kypreos met Closed Loop’s chief commercial officer, Chris Collimore, about a year ago, after a late-night conversation at a birthday party turned to how waste can be used to make roads. Soon after, he saw a Simply Cups collection stand in a 7-Eleven, and got on the phone to Collimore.
“It really did start with an idea that John had that he then matched up with our program,” Collimore says.
Chris Collimore, the chief commercial officer of Closed Loop. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Net-positive waste
The idea is a simple one: instead of burying waste in landfill, the raw materials of that waste are “upcycled” into new products. It means not only keeping stuff out of landfill, but that fewer virgin resources are consumed in the manufacture of new products. It also means less energy and therefore less greenhouse gas emissions go into the sourcing of those new resources.
That’s what’s called closing the loop, or a circular economy.
But there’s a big but: someone has to buy these recycled products, or else the loop has not actually been closed. And that’s where Closed Loop comes in as matchmaker: pairing up waste streams with companies that can do something with them.
Coffee cups are collected by Simply Cups and then turned into asphalt. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
“It’s not until you’re actually buying back the products that are made out of that [reused] material that you’re … properly recycling,” says Rob Pascoe, the organisation’s founder and head. “It’s not just a matter of lifting the lid on your yellow bin at home and putting stuff in the bin and saying, ‘I’ve done my job’.”
There are three conditions that need to be met to close the loop on a waste stream. First, there has to be a need for the product made from that waste, whether that be fence posts or street furniture. Second, the product made from waste has to be fit for purpose – it has to meet the same standards as the existing version. And third, it must be commercially viable.
Commercial viability isn’t about being cheaper than the non-waste-based alternative, Pascoe says. A product made from recycled materials might be slightly more expensive, but consumers need to remember how much money they’re simultaneously saving on waste disposal.
While coffee cups are attractive because they are an everyday and relatively easily collectable waste stream, the real low-hanging fruit for waste reuse is food waste, says Pascoe. Australia spends more than a billion dollars on artificial fertilisers in an attempt to restore the nutrient capacity of the soil that our food crops are grown in. But at the same time, we’re sending huge amounts of food waste to landfill where it generates methane.
“It’s sheer stupidity,” he says.
State Asphalt Services in western Sydney. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Soft plastics are another one, and here Pascoe disagrees with the move to ban single-use plastics.
“It’s not the plastics that are the problem, it’s what we do with the plastics,” he says. As soon as you put a value on waste, it stops being waste and starts being a resource. “If we do that, it is very, very easy to recycle plastics.”
Pascoe says Australia has failed to invest in the necessary infrastructure to recycle properly. When community enthusiasm for recycling was at its peak, few knew the reality: that the waste we so carefully sorted into recycling bins was being shipped off to China.
“That has become what recycling means, and it’s not what recycling means,” he says. “We should be putting the demand back on people who create the waste to buy back products.”
Waste recovery and reuse has the potential to boost the Australian manufacturing industry. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
That change needs to come from the top, Pascoe argues, with government procurement policies that mandate a minimum amount of post-consumer recycled materials in products.
“If we can get to that point with governments then we’ve basically won the issue.”
A major boost for industry
Closing the loop doesn’t just offer environmental benefits, there are huge economic benefits as well, according to Gayle Sloan, CEO of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association Australia. Every 10,000 tonnes of waste that is recovered, reused, repurposed or recycled creates 9.2 jobs, compared with just 2.4 jobs if that material is sent to landfill or exported.
“We’ve got the chance to create four times as many jobs if we actually think about the materials that we consume and purchase, the supply chains, the collection, the reprocessing and the remanufacturing on shore,” Sloan says. Waste recovery and reuse offers the potential to be a major boost for the Australian manufacturing industry coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, if it’s done right.
Sloan says the right sort of conversations are beginning within government, with MPs starting to talk about resources instead of waste, and “recognising that it’s not just something we discard in a linear way”.
The joint federal, state and territory governments’ 2019 National Waste Policy Action Plan set a target of banning the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres starting in late 2020, achieving an 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030, and increasing the use of recycled content by governments and industry. In July this year, the federal government also committed $190m to a new Recycling Modernisation Fund that is intended to generate investment in Australia’s waste and recycling capacity.
Sloan argues Australia also needs a paradigm shift in thinking about how products are manufactured and consumed.
“We need to choose the right materials when we extract resources, and design it in such a way that the value proposition is there and the worth of the material is recognised,” she says. She’d like to see the Australian government mandating the shift to a circular economy strategy, like the European Union has done with its circular economy package.
“It’s not anti-competitive because that is the expectation, that we engage in circular economy that is designing out waste, creating regenerated systems and creating jobs,” she says. “All we’re doing is coming into line with the rest of the world.”
Cradle to cradle
Back in western Sydney, the eventual goal for Collimore and Kypreos is a road that is made of 100% recycled material.
Apologising for the “messy” state of his plant, Kypreos points out piles of crushed rock, sand, bitumen and lime, as well as bits of old road surface, which are all set to be transformed into asphalt. He is already using recycled glass to substitute for some of the sand. A complex process of dehydrating and heating turns it all into road surface.
Chris Collimore’s goal is a road that is made of 100% recycled material. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
There are huge opportunities for industry to make use of waste streams in Australia, Kypreos says, but the infrastructure that’s needed to sort and store waste so it can be easily accessed just doesn’t exist yet. He argues that waste levies should be spent on building that infrastructure, and on encouraging innovative partnerships and projects.
“There’s product in there,” he argues. “It’s just a matter of sitting down and testing and building the science to see if these items that they can pull out of their waste streams are useable or reusable.” But he’s also wary of being seen as the only option. “We’ve got to be careful that we’re not looked at as the new landfill alternative.”
Turning coffee cups into roads is a step in the right direction, but truly closing the loop means ensuring no raw materials are lost at any point along their life cycle. It’s a cradle-to-cradle mentality.
The ultimate goal is to reproduce the same product with recycled material, says Sloan. Plastics – white plastics in particular – would be an easy place to start, she says, because “we can turn that back into a yoghurt container over and over and over – if we choose the right materials, if we have the right collection.”
The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the economy but also presented a unique opportunity: to invest in climate action that creates jobs and stimulates investment, before it’s too late. The Green Recovery features talk to people on the frontline of Australia’s potential green recovery.
But a study has suggested a new way to deal with plastic waste.
The Swiss research suggests a proof-of-concept idea of a new approach to plastic recycling – inspired by the way nature ‘recycles’ the components of organic polymers present in our environment.
Proteins inside organic polymers are constantly broken down into parts and reassembled into different proteins.
Researcher Simone Gavieri wrote: “A protein is like a string of pearls, where each pearl is an amino acid. Each pearl has a different colour, and the colour-sequence determines the string structure and consequently its properties.
“In nature, protein chains break up into the constituent amino acids and cells put such amino acids back together to form new proteins, that is they create new strings of pearls with a different colour sequence.”
Professor Francesco Stellacci, of EPFL, said: “We selected proteins and divided them up into amino acids. We then put the amino acids into a cell-free biological system that assembled the amino acids back into new proteins with entirely different structures and applications.”
Giaveri and Stellacci successfully transformed silk into a protein used in biomedical technology.
Stellacci said: “Importantly, when you break down and assemble proteins in this way, the quality of the proteins produced is exactly the same of that of a newly-synthesised protein. Indeed, you are building something new.”
Stellacci said it would take time to develop a working method to recycle plastic in this way.
He added: “It will require a radically different mindset. Polymers are strings of pearls, but synthetic polymers are made mostly of pearls all of the same colour and when the colour is different the sequence of colour rarely matters.
“Furthermore, we have no efficient way to assemble synthetic polymers from different colour pearls in a way that controls their sequence.”
Research this year found that thousands of rivers, including smaller ones, are responsible for most of the plastic pollution worldwide.
Previously, scientists believed that 10 large rivers – such as the Yangtze in China – were responsible for the bulk of plastic pollution.
In fact, 1,000 rivers – just 1% of all rivers worldwide – carry most of the plastic to the sea.
The research means that areas like tropical islands are likely to be among the worst polluters, the researchers said.
The study by non-profit organisation The Ocean Cleanup used measurements and modelling to work out that 1,000 rivers worldwide are behind 80% of plastic emissions.
You can hear Madam Ng trundling down the road long before you see her.
In the quiet of the early morning, the low rumble of her heavily laden trolley reverberates through the streets of the historic Tiong Bahru area of Singapore.
Madam Ng is a karang guni trader, one of the rag and bone collectors who have traditionally picked up the things people throw away.
This includes everything from old newspapers, drinks cans, second-hand clothes to unwanted electronic devices. They usually sell them on to other karang guni traders or recycling firms.
Karang guni itself comes from the Malay term for the large hessian sacks that they traditionally used to carry their goods.
Madam Ng has been working as a karang guni for over three decades Source BBC
Nowadays, these have been replaced by trolleys like Madam Ng’s, often four-wheeled flat-bed carts, or two-wheeled sack trolleys as well as trucks and vans.
Madam Ng became a karang guni more than three decades ago, as she wanted to make extra money to help pay for one of her daughters to study abroad.
“I was in my 40s and still a nurse. I used to go around collecting newspapers, magazines and books after work – but now I’ve been doing it daily since I retired,” she says as she takes a rare break from her round.
Now, aged 78, her daily work routine would be daunting for many half her age. “Every day I wake up at 4am and am out of the house by 4.30am. I push my cart around the neighbourhood, collecting discarded newspapers and cans. I am out for about four to five hours, then I go home and I’m done for the day.”
Karang guni men and women collect the materials thrown away in Singapore. Source GETTY IMAGES
‘Zero waste’
While rag and bone collectors may seem like an echo from the past in many countries, they are still part of Singapore’s present and most likely its future.
Singapore is known as one of the cleanest cities in the world, and its army of collectors are the city-state’s original recyclers. Even in this $380bn (£270bn) economy, the government sees them playing a crucial part in its sustainability programme.
A karang guni woman weaves through heavy traffic with her trolley. Source GETTY IMAGES
The Singapore Green Plan 2030 covers a whole range of sustainable goals, including cutting the amount of waste sent to landfill by 30% within the next decade.
The recycling business was hit hard by the pandemic as the volume of material Singapore recycled dropped, as the global economy was shut down to slow the spread of Covid.
The sudden halt saw the country’s overall recycling rate, for homes and businesses combined, fall to 52% in 2020 compared to 59% the previous year.
Workers sort through waste by hand at one of Singapore’s recycling hubs. Source GETTY IMAGES
The National Environment Agency (NEA), which is charge of Singapore’s recycling efforts, thinks that this was just a blip and is now focussed on plans to become a zero-waste economy.
Christopher Tan, director of NEA’s sustainability division says he sees karang guni men and women playing an important role as part of the city-state’s recycling network as it aims to hit that ambitious zero-waste target.
“They can complement the current collection methods. There’s still the challenge of getting the recycling from the door of your home. They have networks. They have knowledge of what can and what cannot be recycled,” he says.
Singapore relies on the private sector to manage the island’s rubbish collection, waste disposal and recycling services – and it is these firms that are working with the karang guni industry.
Next generation
One such firm is SembWaste. It has created an app – ezi – that helps to connect the karang guni collectors with the company during their working day, as well as members of the public who want recycling collected from outside their homes.
Technology is being used to create waste collection networks. Source SEMBWASTE
“We have forged partnerships with a network of karang gunis… with more than 100 of them as part of the ezi network,” says Goh Siok Ling, SembWaste’s commercial director.
At 32, Aiden Ang is part of the new generation of karang guni traders. After graduating with a diploma in telecommunications engineering he chose to follow in his father’s footsteps to join the clothing recycling business rather than pursue a more mainstream career.
Despite the downturn in recycling due to Covid, Mr Ang is confident the industry has a promising future: “I personally believe this trade is here to stay in the long term.
“Everyone is getting into the habit of recycling because of education. I am confident the number of recyclers will increase over the years to come.”
Mr Ang sees the use of apps as a big step forward, “with young blood in the company we can run the business in a better way, especially with technology”. He says this is what helped convince him to enter the trade – and to improve it.
“It is super convenient for the residents interested in participating in the recycling drive. For us as the operator, it helps us to organise the operational flow and handle the transactions very efficiently.”
Singapore’s Boat Quay district is full of restaurants, bars and cafes which all need waste collection and recycling. Source GETTY IMAGES
Mr Ang also points to opportunities he sees for young people, as the trade is currently dominated by older karang guni collectors, like Madam Ng, many of whom are nearing retirement.
‘I want to keep on’
Although Madam Ng may not be part of the new generation of tech-savvy karang guni traders, she is not planning to give up her trolley just yet.
“I sell my collection [on] to another karang guni who comes round on his lorry. He’s very busy, as a lot of seniors do what I do, and he collects from them too,” she says.
A criticism sometimes levelled at the karang guni business is that it relies on elderly people who are paid poorly for the amount of physical work they put in.
But for Madam Ng the job isn’t really about money these days. Since being widowed, she has lived comfortably with one of her daughters and her family.
“It is physically tough. My daughters tell me to stop. But I’d rather do it than sit around at home.”
“Sitting too much is bad for you – it’s very bad for the mind. When I’m out with my cart, it helps to clear my mind.”
Plastic bottles have been converted into vanilla flavouring using genetically engineered bacteria, the first time a valuable chemical has been brewed from waste plastic.
Upcycling plastic bottles into more lucrative materials could make the recycling process far more attractive and effective. Currently plastics lose about 95% of their value as a material after a single use. Encouraging better collection and use of such waste is key to tackling the global plastic pollution problem.
Researchers have already developed mutant enzymes to break down the polyethylene terephthalate polymer used for drinks bottles into its basic units, terephthalic acid (TA). Scientists have now used bugs to convert TA into vanillin.
Vanillin is used widely in the food and cosmetics industries and is an important bulk chemical used to make pharmaceuticals, cleaning products and herbicides. Global demand is growing and in 2018 was 37,000 tonnes, far exceeding the supply from natural vanilla beans. About 85% of vanillin is currently synthesised from chemicals derived from fossil fuels.
Joanna Sadler, of the University of Edinburgh, who conducted the new work, said: “This is the first example of using a biological system to upcycle plastic waste into a valuable industrial chemical and it has very exciting implications for the circular economy.”
Stephen Wallace, also of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Our work challenges the perception of plastic being a problematic waste and instead demonstrates its use as a new carbon resource from which high value products can be made.”
The research, published in the journal Green Chemistry, used engineered E coli bacteria to transform TA into vanillin. The scientists warmed a microbial broth to 37C for a day, the same conditions as for brewing beer, Wallace said. This converted 79% of the TA into vanillin.
Next the scientists will further tweak the bacteria to increase the conversion rate further, he said: “We think we can do that pretty quickly. We have an amazing roboticised DNA assembly facility here.” They will also work on scaling up the process to convert larger amounts of plastic. Other valuable molecules could also be brewed from TA, such as some used in perfumes.
Ellis Crawford, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “This is a really interesting use of microbial science to improve sustainability. Using microbes to turn waste plastics, which are harmful to the environment, into an important commodity is a beautiful demonstration of green chemistry.”
