Talking rubbish

A special report on waste February 28th 2009

WWaste.inddaste.indd 1 117/2/097/2/09 15:56:2015:56:20 The Economist February 28th 2009 A special report on waste 1

Talking rubbish Also in this section You are what you throw away The anthropology of garbage. Page 2

Down in the dumps Managing waste properly is expensive, which is why rich countries mostly do it better than poor ones. Page 3

A better hole The charms of modern land†lls. Page 5

The appliance of science Trash goes high•tech. Page 6

Round and round it goes Recycling is good for the environment, but it costs. Is it worth it? Page 8

Muck and brass Environmental worries have transformed the waste industry, says The waste business smells of money. Page 10 Edward McBride. But governments’ policies remain largely incoherent

Less is more HE stretch of the Paci†c between Ha• businesses makes up just 24% of the total The ultimate in waste disposal is to tackle the Twaii and California is virtually empty. (see chart 1, next page). In addition, both problem at source. Page 12 There are no islands, no shipping lanes, no developed and developing countries gen• human presence for thousands of miles‹ erate vast quantities of construction and just sea, sky and rubbish. The prevailing demolition debris, industrial e‰uent, currents cause ‡otsam from around the mine tailings, sewage residue and agricul• world to accumulate in a vast becalmed tural waste. Extracting enough gold to patch of ocean. In places, there are a mil• make a typical wedding ring, for example, lion pieces of plastic per square kilometre. can generate three tonnes of mining waste. That can mean as much as 112 times more plastic than plankton, the †rst link in the Out of sight, out of mind marine food chain. All this adds up to per• Rubbish may be universal, but it is little haps 100m tonnes of ‡oating garbage, and studied and poorly understood. Nobody more is arriving every day. knows how much of it the world generates Wherever people have been‹and or what it does with it. In many rich coun• Acknowledgments some places where they have not‹they tries, and most poor ones, only the patchi• In addition to those mentioned in the text, the author have left waste behind. Litter lines the est of records are kept. That may be under• would like to thank the following for their help in the preparation of this report: Sarah Brown and Katie Zabel of world’s roads; dumps dot the landscape; standable: by de†nition, waste is some• the Waste Resources Action Programme; Vera Carley of slurry and sewage slosh into rivers and thing its owner no longer wants or takes Covanta Energy; Nick Cli e of Closed Loop Recycling; Beth streams. Up above, thousands of frag• much interest in. Herzfeld of Greenpeace; Kevin Hurst of Veolia Environmental Services; Bruce Jenkyn•Jones of Impax ments of defunct spacecraft careen Ignorance spawns scares, such as the Asset Management; Jyoti Mhapsekar of Stree Mukti through space, and occasionally more de• fuss surrounding New York’s infamous Sanghatana; Nick Nuttal of UNEP; Robert Reed of Norcal bris is produced by collisions such as the garbage barge, which in 1987 sailed the At• Waste Systems; Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Coalition; and M. Subashini of the Indian High one that destroyed an American satellite in lantic for six months in search of a place to Commission, London mid•February. Ken Noguchi, a Japanese dump its load, giving many Americans the mountaineer, estimates that he has collect• false impression that their country’s land• A list of sources is at ed nine tonnes of rubbish from the slopes †lls had run out of space. It also makes it www.economist.com/specialreports of Mount Everest during †ve clean•up ex• hard to draw up sensible policies: just peditions. There is still plenty left. think of the endless debate about whether An audio interview with the author is at The average Westerner produces over recycling is the only way to save the plan• www.economist.com/audiovideo 500kg of municipal waste a year‹and that et‹or an expensive waste of time. is only the most obvious portion of the Rubbish can cause all sorts of pro• More articles about the environment are at rich world’s discards. In Britain, for exam• blems. It often stinks, attracts vermin and www.economist.com/environment ple, municipal waste from households and creates eyesores. More seriously, it can re• 1 2 A special report on waste The Economist February 28th 2009

2 lease harmful chemicals into the soil and industry group, puts it, ŒWhy †sh bodies water when dumped, or into the air when Who’s the messiest? 1 out of the river when you can stop them burned. It is the source of almost 4% of the UK waste, 2006 jumping o the bridge? world’s greenhouse gases, mostly in the Until last summer such views were Household Commercial form of methane from rotting food‹and 11 13 spreading quickly. Entrepreneurs were that does not include all the methane gen• queuing up to scour rubbish for anything erated by animal slurry and other farm that could be recycled. There was even talk Industrial waste. And then there are some really nas• Mining & 10 of mining old land†lls to extract steel and ty forms of industrial waste, such as spent quarrying aluminium cans. And waste that could not nuclear fuel, for which no universally ac• 28 % be recycled should at least be used to gen• cepted disposal methods have thus far erate energy, the evangelists argued. A been developed. brave new wasteless world seemed nigh. Yet many also see waste as an opportu• Sewage 1 But since then plummeting prices for Construction & nity. Getting rid of it all has become a huge Agriculture 1 demolition 36 virgin paper, plastic and fuels, and hence global business. Rich countries spend also for the waste that substitutes for them, Source: Institution of Mechanical Engineers some $120 billion a year disposing of their have put an end to such visions. Many of municipal waste alone and another $150 the recycling †rms that had argued rubbish billion on industrial waste, according to Much of it is already burned to generate was on the way out now say that unless CyclOpe, a French research institute. The energy. Clever new technologies to turn it they are given †nancial help, they them• amount of waste that countries produce into fertiliser or chemicals or fuel are being selves will disappear. tends to grow in tandem with their econo• developed all the time. Visionaries see a fu• Subsidies are a bad idea. Governments mies, and especially with the rate of ur• ture in which things like household rub• have a role to play in the business of waste banisation. So waste †rms see a rich future bish and pig slurry will provide the fuel for management, but it is a regulatory and su• in places such as China, India and Brazil, cars and homes, doing away with the need pervisory one. They should oblige people which at present spend only about $5 bil• for dirty fossil fuels. Others imagine a who create waste to clean up after them• lion a year collecting and treating their mu• world without waste, with rubbish being selves and ideally ensure that the price of nicipal waste. routinely recycled. As Bruce Parker, the any product re‡ects the cost of disposing Waste also presents an opportunity in a head of the National Solid Wastes Manage• of it safely. That would help to signal grander sense: as a potential resource. ment Association (NSWMA), an American which items are hardest to get rid of, giving 1

You are what you throw away The anthropology of garbage

ASTE can be a revelation. Excava• honest account of their owners’ behav• ular product actually causes people to Wtions of old rubbish tips (or mid• iour than do the owners themselves. A re• throw more of it away, perhaps because dens, as archaeologists call them) provide search programme at the University of Ar• they have bought too much of it. Similarly, much of our knowledge of everyday life izona conducted several studies a public campaign to get people to take in the past. Many ancient civilisations comparing the participants’ own assess• hazardous waste to special collection piled up mountains of garbage. At a spot ments of their habits with the record pro• points makes them put more of it in the in America called Pope’s Creek, on the vided by their rubbish. It turned out that bin. Such campaigns seem to prompt shores of the Potomac river, oyster shells people wasted much more food than they them to have a clear•out but they often do discarded by the pre•Columbian inhabit• realised, claimed to cook from scratch not make it to the collection point. ants cover an area of 30 acres (12 hectares) more often than they really did and ate to an average depth of ten feet. Enormous more junk food and less virtuous stu Don’t ask, dig shell middens can be found all over the than they admitted. For example, they Waste can be used to determine with great world, wherever ancient migrants came overestimated their consumption of liver accuracy how many people are living in a across handy oyster and mussel beds. by 200%. A survey on consumption of red particular place, how old they are, how Archaeologists have found papyruses meat was particularly telling. Rich house• much they earn and which ethnic group inscribed with parts of lost plays by Soph• holds, perhaps wanting to be seen to be they come from. America’s Census Bu• ocles and Euripides in a Greco•Roman eating healthily, claimed to consume less reau has toyed with the idea of using data rubbish tip in Egypt. The same site, near of it than they did, whereas poor ones, derived from analyses of household rub• the ancient town of Oxyrhynchus, yield• possibly indulging in wishful thinking, bish to adjust its survey data. America’s ed a wealth of 2,000•year•old invoices, re• claimed to eat more. Supreme Court has also acknowledged ceipts, tax returns and other documents. The project uncovered many other the importance of waste, ruling that po• Modern waste can be equally enlight• oddities of human behaviour. For exam• lice may rummage through trash left out ening. Dustbins generally provide a more ple, a well•publicised shortage of a partic• for collection without a warrant. The Economist February 28th 2009 A special report on waste 3

2 consumers an incentive to buy goods that waste sounds politically attractive. Brit• the repercussions. At the very least, gov• create less waste in the †rst place. ain, meanwhile, has started taxing land†lls ernments should make sure there are mar• That may sound simple enough, but so heavily that local oˆcials, desperate to kets for the materials they want collected. governments seldom get the rules right. In †nd an alternative, are investing in all This special report will argue that, by poorer countries they often have no rules manner of unproven waste•processing and large, waste is being better managed at all, or if they have them they fail to en• technologies. than it was. The industry that deals with it force them. In rich countries they are often As for recycling, it is useless to urge peo• is becoming more eˆcient, the technol• inconsistent: too strict about some sorts of ple to salvage stu for which there are no ogies are getting more e ective and the waste and worryingly lax about others. buyers. If †rms are passing up easy oppor• pollution it causes is being controlled more They are also prone to imposing arbitrary tunities to reduce greenhouse•gas emis• tightly. In some places less waste is being targets and taxes. California, for example, sions by re•using waste, then governments created in the †rst place. But progress is wants to recycle all its trash not because it have set the price of emissions too low. slow because the politicians who are try• necessarily makes environmental or eco• They would do better to deal with that pro• ing to in‡uence what we discard and what nomic sense but because the goal of Œzero blem directly than to try to regulate away we keep often make a mess of it. 7 Down in the dumps

Managing waste properly is expensive, which is why rich countries mostly do it better than poor ones

HERE are really only three things you put to use. Human and animal droppings Tcan do with waste: bury it, burn it or re• were gathered up and spread on †elds as Rich pickings 2 cycle it. All of them carry environmental fertiliser. Rags were used to make paper. Municipal waste per person and †nancial costs, and all require careful Anything that had no further use was, Latest year available, kg management. At †rst sight burying or and still is, burned or buried. To begin burning the stu seem the simplest op• with, dumps were simply places where 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 tions, but the potentially hazardous conse• waste was left to rot with little or no treat• OECD average quences require strict controls, as this sec• ment. At best, a layer of dirt or debris was South Africa tion will show. Recycling, which is a highly spread over the decaying rubbish to help Brazil complicated business, will be dealt with in control smells and vermin, a technique China a later section. adopted by the inhabitants of Knossos in India The very idea that waste needs to be Crete in about 3000BC. Source: OECD Œmanaged is relatively new. Throughout The amount of waste a community much of human history waste took care of generates tends to grow with its economy itself, and in many parts of the world it still (see chart 2). Thus America produces over Even where plenty of land is available, does. In poor agricultural societies there is 700kg of municipal waste per person each locals are often hostile to land†lls because not much of it to begin with. Broken tools year, compared with Nairobi’s 220kg. The of the damage they can do to human and worn clothes are repaired, food scraps richer people get, the more paper, plastic health and to the environment. Densely are fed to livestock and so on. In such and metals they chuck out, so the propor• packed organic matter produces methane places waste is seen as having an inherent tion of food waste goes down. Ash tends to as it rots, which can catch †re or cause ex• value. The reason why plastic bags blow disappear from household waste altogeth• plosions. That is also bad for the atmo• about by the roadsides in so many poor er as electricity and gas replace coal• and sphere, because methane is a greenhouse countries, says Philippe Chalmin of the wood•†red boilers and stoves. gas 21times more potent than carbon diox• Université Paris Dauphine, is not that the ide. The process of decay produces ammo• local people are litterbugs but that they are Buried, not gone nia too, which in suˆcient concentrations frugal enough not to need a waste•collec• The increased volume of waste going to can poison †sh and amphibians and ren• tion system of any sort. Plastic bags are land†ll causes several problems. The †rst der water undrinkable. among the few items they cannot recycle. one is to †nd enough space for it. Some The changing composition of waste go• Waste †rst became a problem in cities, countries have no trouble with that: Amer• ing to land†ll also gives rise to other forms where it accumulated faster than it rotted ica’s existing land†lls, for example, have 20 of pollution. The bacteria that break down away, creating an eyesore and a health haz• years’ worth of capacity left, according to rotting waste produce acids. In the past the ard. In 1552 Shakespeare’s father was †ned NSWMA, the industry group. The former high proportion of ash in household rub• a shilling for leaving excrement in the Fresh Kills land†ll in New York, at 12 square bish would have helped to neutralise street instead of taking it to the designated kilometres (†ve square miles), is the them, but now they can be concentrated spot at the edge of town. Benjamin Frank• world’s biggest man•made structure, enough to dissolve poisonous heavy met• lin helped to set up America’s †rst street• dwar†ng Egypt’s pyramids. But in densely als such as lead and cadmium. Water cleaning service in Philadelphia in 1757. But populated countries such as Singapore, or leaching through the land†ll can carry even in cities most items that would now in mountainous places such as Japan, †nd• such toxins into the groundwater or near• be considered rubbish were collected and ing an appropriate site can be hard. by bodies of water, and from there into 1 4 A special report on waste The Economist February 28th 2009

2 drinking water and the food chain. The same is true of the rules for inciner• Western household waste is full of dan• ators. Indeed, their advocates now prefer gerous chemicals. There are paints and bat• to call them waste•to•energy or energy• teries containing lead; thermometers and from•waste plants, which sounds more lightbulbs containing mercury; electronic positive. One of the world’s biggest such goods full of hazardous substances; pesti• plants, in Fairfax County, Virginia, takes in cides from the garden; solvents for clean• about 1m tonnes of municipal waste a ing; and used motor oil from the garage, to year, slightly more than the Pitsea land†ll. name a few of the most common. In the• Two sinister•looking six•taloned mechani• ory, none of these items should go into or• cal claws worthy of a Bond †lm grasp rub• dinary land†lls. In practice, many do. bish †ve tonnes at a time and drop it onto a Industrial waste, medical waste and conveyor. The moving metal grates carry mining waste often contain toxic sub• the waste slowly through a furnace at ever• stances in even greater quantities and con• increasing temperatures to ensure a thor• centrations. CyclOpe estimates that the ough burn. The plant generates up to world’s biggest economies produce per• 80MW, enough to power 75,000 homes. haps 150m tonnes of hazardous waste a In the control room technicians pore year between them, but information is over second•by•second readings of the lev• alarmingly thin on the ground. Heavy met• Hulking hazards els of di erent pollutants in the exhaust. To als and acids often commingle in mining eliminate dioxins, regulations require that waste, much as they do in ordinary land• rules tend to be strictly enforced. Last the waste reach a temperature of at least †lls, and can leach into the soil and water. month, for example, †rms and municipal• 1,800°F. In the smokestack, di erent †lters At the most polluted sites even the dust ities that had dumped hazardous waste in remove oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, blown from tailings can be dangerous. a land†ll in New Jersey, causing local acidic gases, heavy metals and soot. All the Yet the main alternative, burning waste, groundwater to be contaminated, agreed water used goes through its own treatment can be just as bad, both for people and for to a legal settlement of almost $100m to plant. The ash is moved straight to an adja• the planet. Smoke from incineration may cover past and future clean•up costs. cent land†ll, where it takes up only a tenth carry many of the same toxic substances Modern land†lls are forced to take elab• of the volume of the original waste. up the chimney and into the atmosphere. orate precautions (see box on the next page Nitrogen and sulphur in the smoke con• for an example from a British town called Burnt o erings tribute to acid rain, and soot particles Pitsea). At a recent hearing about the pro• The EPA has calculated that such controls cause respiratory problems. In addition, posed expansion of a land†ll on the coast have reduced emissions of dioxins and fu• burning organic waste produces chemicals of California, one questioner disputed a rans from America’s incinerators from called dioxins and furans, suspected car• bureaucrat’s claim that global warming 8,900 grams a year to 80. By contrast, burn• cinogens which damage the nervous and would not cause sea levels to rise fast ing of household and garden waste in bar• immune systems, among other ill e ects, enough to a ect the site. Another won• rels and bon†res produces 500 grams a and are harmful even in minuscule quanti• dered whether the land†ll was as earth• year. Germany’s environment ministry ties. After burning there is still the ash to be quake•proof as its owners claimed. A third reckons that incinerators have actually disposed of, usually in a land†ll, again queried the location of the wells used to helped to improve air quality by reducing with potentially baleful consequences. test for groundwater contamination. Sev• the need for dirtier coal•†red power plants. In the 1960s and 1970s a series of grisly eral worried that the †ve•yearly reviews of Yet local authorities in many countries re• accidents with toxic waste prompted gov• all these precautions would not be tough main hostile to new incinerators. No new ernments in rich countries to regulate its enough. The application was eventually ones have been built in America, for exam• disposal more stringently. In Japan, for ex• approved‹but a decade had passed since ple, since 1995. ample, the discharge of mercury•laden it was †rst lodged. It would be reckless to claim that strict• chemicals into Minamata Bay killed at In his book ŒThe Economics of Waste, er controls have solved all the West’s waste least 1,000 people and made another Richard Porter, an academic, examined the problems. Much still remains to be cleared 10,000 ill. In America a neighbourhood in costs and bene†ts of the American govern• up from the time before the new rules Niagara Falls called Love Canal turned out ment’s decision to tighten controls on were adopted. And no regulations are fool• to have been built on top of clay pits con• leachate from land†lls in 1991, using data proof. Environmental groups such as taining hazardous waste from a chemical supplied by the Environmental Protection Greenpeace argue that land†ll gas systems factory. Following a huge rise in birth de• Agency (EPA). The EPA said its new rules capture a lower proportion of methane fects and miscarriages the government would save 2.4 people from cancer over emissions than waste †rms claim, and that moved over 800 families to new homes. 300 years, at a cost, Mr Porter calculated, of the liners that keep leachate in land†lls are Most Western governments have since $3.5 billion each. If the agency’s standard bound to spring leaks sooner or later. The imposed rules to minimise pollution from discount rate is applied, the cost rises to $32 regulators who say that burning rubbish is land†lls and incinerators and to prevent billion for each life saved. True, leachate now safe were making the same claim leaks of toxic waste. Firms generally need a can lead to many lesser health problems when incinerators were still spewing out licence to use, transport or dispose of the and environmental e ects that the EPA did dioxins. And anything that is burned rath• most dangerous substances, which are not assess. But the sums give a sense of er than recycled represents an energy loss, kept track of and often have to be treated how stringent land†ll regulation in rich since more power will be needed to pro• before incineration or land†lling. These countries has become. duce replacement materials from scratch. 1 The Economist February 28th 2009 A special report on waste 5

2 On the whole, however, land†lls and In poor countries waste is still much lect land†ll gas. So during the dry season incinerators seem to attract a dispropor• less strictly regulated, and the few rules are several †res break out every day and tionate amount of scrutiny and regula• seldom enforced. In Madagascar, for exam• smoulder away, releasing plumes of acrid tion‹especially given that some equally ple, only 6% of the rubbish is collected at smoke. Mr Tawase’s sta try to †ght these dangerous facilities are barely monitored all. Other countries manage to gather their with a water truck and hoses. at all. A worrying loophole in America’s waste, but do not supervise its disposal. Local residents complain that the dump rules was revealed in December of last The biggest land†ll in Mumbai, India, gives o horrible smells and that the year when a collapsed dyke sent a billion called Deonar dumping ground, is just smoke from the †res causes asthma and gallons of toxic sludge pouring into 300 that. Opened in 1927, it occupies the same other respiratory ailments. They regularly acres of rural Tennessee. The sludge, a mix• area as Pitsea but takes in almost twice as lodge complaints and march in protest to ture of water and ash from a coal•†red much waste a year. Goats and bu aloes the city council’s oˆces. Last year some power plant, contained signi†cant graze amid the reeking mounds, and thou• went on hunger strike. Local oˆcials freely amounts of poisonous heavy metals. Oˆ• sands of scavengers comb the site, looking admit that the dump is a source of serious cials say the local drinking water is still for items of value. When trucks arrive to pollution. safe, although the spill has killed †sh in dump their loads, these Œrag•pickers surge Deonar is by no means unusual. Most nearby rivers. The utility concerned, the forward to get †rst choice of the refuse. The of the developing world’s waste, says Luis Tennessee Valley Authority, says it is ensuing mêlées often lead to injuries, says Diaz, of CalRecovery, a waste consultancy, spending $1m a day on the clean•up. Prakash Tawase, Deonar’s manager. is put into open dumps with no controls on That coal•ash pond in Tennessee is just leachate or land†ll gas. Open burning of one of about 1,300 similar repositories Hold your nose waste, another common disposal method, across America. The EPA believes that lax Mr Tawase has no budget for fencing or releases lots of dioxins, just as it did in in• disposal of coal ash has led to the contami• crowd control, let alone modern environ• cinerators in the rich world before the nation of groundwater in 24 states. But un• mental safeguards. No attempt is made to rules were tightened. der pressure from utilities it had previously control leachate, which swills out into the In 2007 the Blacksmith Institute, an dropped plans to classify coal ash as haz• surrounding creeks and marshes and on American NGO, listed Dandora in Kenya, ardous waste. Last month Lisa Jackson, the into the Arabian Sea. He does not know the site of Nairobi’s main dump, among agency’s new boss, promised in her con†r• how dangerous it is, because the water is the world’s 30 most polluted spots. Other mation hearing to return to the subject. not tested. Nor is there any system to col• places on the institute’s list included La 1

A better hole The charms of modern land†lls

ANDFILLS in rich countries have to land†ll from the surrounding marshes falcons, cannons, scarecrows, sonar and Ljump through a lot of hoops to make and river, preventing any contaminated other gadgets to scare o the birds that try themselves acceptable these days. For ex• water‹Œleachate in the industry jargon‹ to scavenge on the rubbish, but not at Pit• ample, the facility at Pitsea in Britain, on from leaking out. Land†lls without the sea, because the surrounding wetlands the banks of the River Thames near Lon• bene†t of a naturally impermeable layer are among Britain’s few remaining breed• don, accepts only solid municipal and use plastic liners and imported clay. ing grounds of the black•tailed godwit. commercial waste, because European law A system of ditches and drains collects prohibits the mingling of liquid and solid all the leachate, which is pumped through From here to eternity waste, and of hazardous and non•hazard• a treatment plant similar to a sewage Veolia must also set aside money to en• ous waste. Its permit allows it to take in a works. Before it can be released back into sure that the leachate continues to be million tonnes of waste a year. The plan the nearby watercourses it has to meet treated, the gas collected, the local envi• requires the parts of the site facing a near• stringent standards, including maximum ronment monitored and any damage rem• by road and houses to be †lled in and re• levels of ammonia, heavy metals and any edied after the land†ll stops accepting habilitated †rst to help hide it from locals’ chemicals that might cause oxygen deple• waste, which is meant to happen in 2015. eyes‹even though just across the river a tion. Veolia is required to sample water Funding for these †nancial guarantees massive oil re†nery looms. from the surrounding area regularly. makes up 10•15% of the tipping fee of The land†ll sits on a natural founda• The †rm also has to collect the meth• around £25 a tonne (not including the gov• tion of London clay which is more or less ane emitted by the land†ll, which has ernment’s land†ll tax). The †rm’s liability impermeable. The owner, Veolia Environ• meant sinking 1,000 wells at regular inter• lasts as long as the land†ll continues to nement, one of the giants of the industry, vals across the 120•hectare site. The gas fu• generate leachate or gas. All the data on has built an underground wall of similar• els ten turbines, each of which generates pollutants are published. Visitors are al• ly waterproof clay around the site which 14MW of electricity. Air quality, dust, lit• ways amazed, the site manager says, to extends deep enough to reach the natural ter, odours and vermin are strictly con• discover how much more there is to land• barrier below. The idea is to seal o the trolled too. At other sites Veolia has to use †lling than tipping waste in a hole. 6 A special report on waste The Economist February 28th 2009

Pakistan. Shipbreaking provides jobs for tens of thousands of people, as well as cheap raw materials for industry. But slic• ing up huge oil tankers or freighters on beaches releases oil, heavy metals, diox• ins, asbestos and other toxic chemicals into the sea.

Last voyage The sea is the ultimate receptacle for much of the world’s waste. Rubbish is dumped into it by ships, or thrown or blown into it from coastal settlements, or washed into it through rivers, drains and sewage pipes. According to the United Nations Environ• Not as clean as it looks ment Programme (UNEP), perhaps 6.4m tonnes of waste †nds its way into the sea 2 Oroya, Peru, where poorly managed e‰u• The United Nations estimates that the each year. The Paci†c Œgyre is the worst• ent from 80 years of mining and smelting world discards up to 50m tonnes of elec• a ected area, but the problem is universal. has left local children with three times tronic goods, or e•waste, every year. Oˆ• Research suggests that every square kilo• more lead in their blood than the World cial recycling e orts in rich countries cap• metre of the ocean has an average of Health Organisation’s recommended ture just a small fraction of this, according 13,000 pieces of plastic ‡oating in it. And maximum; and Dzerzhinsk, Russia, where to Greenpeace. Most ends up in poor coun• according to other studies, the ‡oating por• 300,000 tonnes of chemical waste were tries where scavengers break apart old mo• tion makes up just 15% of Œmarine litter; disposed of haphazardly, mostly in Soviet bile phones, computers and televisions to another 15% washes up on the shore and times. Life expectancy in the city is 42 years extract valuable metals for recycling, re• 70% ends up on the sea bed. for men and 47 for women. leasing various harmful substances in the The plastic waste, in particular, does Another big worry is the export of haz• process. In an area in Ghana where e• great harm to marine life. Birds, †sh and ardous waste from rich countries, where it waste is stripped, Greenpeace recently other animals often die after becoming en• would be expensive to get rid of, to poor found high levels of lead, dioxins and tangled in it or mistakenly eating it. It can ones, where it can be dumped cheaply. In phthalates, which can damage the liver smother reed beds, reefs and other impor• principle, under a treaty called the Basel and testes. Similar degrees of contamina• tant ecosystems. It can absorb toxins, mak• Convention, this is illegal unless the receiv• tion have been found at e•waste dumps in ing it more dangerous still to ingest. Even ing government has given explicit prior India and China. tiny barnacles take in microscopic frag• consent. But exporters sometimes succeed Many poor countries have built thriv• ments of the stu , which then move up the in passing o waste chemicals as useful ing, oˆcially sanctioned industries to recy• food chain, with unknown consequences. ones, or clapped•out computers as dona• cle waste that would be considered haz• The damage is not just to the environment tions for the poor. If ill•paid customs oˆ• ardous in the rich world. Almost all the but to †sheries and tourism too. Yet the cials spot the deception, they can often be world’s big ships, for example, are disman• world’s governments have made little ef• bribed to turn a blind eye. tled and recycled in India, Bangladesh and fort to regulate marine waste at all. 7 The appliance of science

Trash goes high•tech

AN a land†ll ever be too sanitary? Per• That may sound like a good thing be• methane collected but also the capacity of C haps surprisingly, the answer is yes. cause it reduces methane emissions and the land†ll, since waste shrinks as it rots. It Some of them, it turns out, are so dry and leachate. But it also spreads out the risk of should also reduce the degree of monitor• airtight that their contents never rot. Dur• pollution over a very long period. And ing and treatment needed after closure, ing its excavations of di erent land†lls, the methane is diˆcult to capture in small vol• and allow the site to be put to another use Garbage Project at the University of Arizo• umes at low concentrations. So Waste more quickly. na has encountered 15•year•old steak, with Management, America’s biggest waste Waste Management has tried pumping fat and meat intact, and 30•year•old news• †rm, has been experimenting with a type di erent mixtures through land†lls to papers, still quite legible. It concluded that of land†ll called a Œbioreactor, designed achieve the desired e ect, and found that in many land†lls only food and garden to ensure and accelerate the decay of bio• injections of out•of•date beer and soft clippings rot. Other supposedly biode• degradable waste by injecting a mixture of drinks work better than water. It has man• gradable materials, such as paper and air, water and recycled leachate. That aged to produce gas four times faster than wood, often do not decompose at all. should increase not just the amount of normal and reduce the volume of the 1 The Economist February 28th 2009 A special report on waste 7

2 waste by up to 35%. The †rm has already It is burning, however, that has attract• other technologies called gasi†cation and applied the technique to six land†lls and ed the most futuristic technologies. In pyrolysis. Again, both have been around plans to add more this year and next. many countries waste•to•energy technol• since the 19th century, but used for other Burying is not the only form of waste ogy in its traditional form is being held things. They both involve heating, rather disposal where new techniques are being back by fears about pollution, which make than burning, waste until it breaks down tested: burning and recycling, which in it hard to get licences and permits. More• into a ‡ammable mixture of carbon mon• some countries account for a large propor• over, waste can vary enormously from oxide and hydrogen, called syngas, and re• tion of the total (see chart 3), are also going place to place and day to day, making it sidual char, ash or slag. The syngas can be through great technological upheaval. The hard to calibrate equipment. That can lead converted into a number of di erent next section of this report looks at recy• to higher maintenance costs and lower en• chemicals or even liquid fuel. Waste Man• cling in the traditional sense, of salvaging ergy yields than expected. agement, for example, has started a pilot used metal, plastic and paper. But the sort One solution is to treat waste before scheme to turn it into diesel. of recycling where the kit is changing fast• burning it to obtain a more consistent fuel. A few dozen gasi†cation and pyrolysis est is arguably the humblest: composting. The simplest technique is to chop it up. plants are up and running in Europe and Converting waste into fertiliser saves That helps a little, but does nothing to sep• Japan, and more are planned. Proponents space in land†lls and provides an extra arate out the items that do not burn or that argue that they are cleaner than existing source of revenue. But traditional com• would fetch a higher price if recycled. waste•to•energy facilities. But the main ad• posting does not save as many green• vantage of these technologies over inciner• house•gas emissions as it might, since it Sterile solution ation, at least in theory, is that syngas can still involves decomposition. Instead, several †rms are touting an alter• power gas turbines to make electricity. Hence the recent enthusiasm for a tech• native treatment called autoclaving. In es• These are more eˆcient than the steam tur• nique called anaerobic digestion, which sence, autoclaves are industrial•sized rotat• bines used in waste•to•energy plants. The extracts energy and fertiliser from biode• ing pressure•cookers. They have been used hitch is that syngas from waste is full of gradable waste while also reducing emis• to sterilise things since the 19th century, but tarry residue that tends to gum up the tur• sions. Animal slurry, food scraps or garden steaming municipal waste in them is a bine. It usually needs to be †ltered, a step clippings are placed in vessels that capture new idea. The combination of heat, mo• that raises the cost and reduces the overall the methane as they decompose, leaving tion and pressure cleans recyclable items, eˆciency of the process. nothing but liquid and solid fertiliser‹ even washing o labels and glue. It also Several †rms have come up with ways which add to the emissions savings by tak• breaks down food, paper and other com• to make cleaner syngas. One method in• ing the place of chemical fertilisers made bustible material into a †brous mass that volves a device called a plasma arc gasi†er, from fossil fuels. can be used either as fuel or for anaerobic which generates arti†cial lightning bolts However, even small amounts of stray digestion. The fuel is of suˆcient quality between two electrodes. The temperature plastic or glass can cause the whole pro• and consistency to allow it to be used as a of the arc itself can reach 13,000°C or more. cess to break down. Municipalities that ask substitute for coal in factories and power Even a few feet away it can be over residents to separate their biodegradable plants, not just in incinerators. 4,000°C, more than enough to vaporise waste from other rubbish often end up A British †rm called Sterecycle opened most waste and break down complex mol• with material that is too contaminated to the world’s †rst big waste autoclave in ecules. When the gas is cooled, any hazard• be of much use. It is only in places with lots north•east England last year and recently ous elements in the waste end up sealed in of farms generating big quantities of ani• announced plans to double its capacity. A a glassy slag that is safe to put into land†ll. mal slurry, such as Denmark and southern rival, Graphite Resources, is building an What some pilot plants have shown so America, that the practice is taking o . even bigger plant nearby and there are far, however, is that a lot of the electricity Another nascent treatment for biode• plans for several more around Britain. But produced is needed to power the arc. Plans gradable waste is enzymatic hydrolysis, industry veterans question whether the for the †rst full•scale facility, in Saint Lucie, which uses enzymes to break down com• revenue from the recyclables and the fuel Florida, were recently scaled back. plex molecules into sugars from which eth• will justify the capital and running costs. Ze•Gen, based in Massachusetts, gas• anol can be fermented. At present this pro• Much the same doubt surrounds two i†es waste by injecting it into molten steel. cess is uneconomic, but Steen Riisgaard, The syngas rises through the pool, heavy the boss of Novozymes, one of the †rms metals sink to the bottom and other con• that make the enzymes, says the cost is fall• Bury, burn or recycle? 3 taminants form a slag on top. Running this ing fast and claims that his American cus• Municipal waste management, % of total kind of furnace, says Bill Davis, the com• tomers will be making money by 2011, Landfill Recycled/ pany’s boss, consumes only 15% of the en• with the help of government subsidies. composted/other ergy it produces. Incineration If Mr Riisgaard is right, there is a wealth The chief problem Ze•Gen and other of farm waste that could be turned into 0 20 40 60 80 100 †rms with whizz•bang waste technologies fuel, from corn cobs to citrus peel to wood Greece face, says Mr Davis, is raising money to chips. By 2030, America aims to produce build full•scale plants. At the moment nei• Britain 5% of its power, 20% of its transport fuel ther banks nor individual investors have and 25% of its chemicals from biomass‹ Germany the appetite to take a punt on an unproven mostly farm, forestry and municipal Denmark idea. In the longer term he worries that so waste. By the same date the European Un• Netherlands many new waste•processing facilities will ion estimates that waste could provide spring up that they may actually have to Source: Institute for Public Policy Research about 6% of all its energy. compete for rubbish. 7 8 A special report on waste The Economist February 28th 2009

Round and round it goes

Recycling is good for the environment, but it costs. Is it worth it?

REG RUIZ and Tara Bai Hiyale live on of waste. She also has somewhere to store knee•deep in waste paper which she is sep• Gopposite sides of the world, in utterly the material she collects, safe from thieves arating into cardboard, newspaper, oˆce di erent cities: San Francisco and Mum• and gouging policemen. And she no longer paper, glossy paper, coloured paper and bai. Mr Ruiz has a steady job which brings has to work outdoors all day in the blazing envelopes‹which, she says proudly, fetch in almost $20 an hour, along with a pen• sun and torrential monsoon rain. four rupees a kilo, against just one rupee sion, health insurance and even a stake in The swarming ‡ies and sickly, fetid for the newspaper. the company concerned, thanks to an em• smell that †ll the shed do not seem to put ployee share•ownership plan. Mrs Hiyale her o her work. She sits on a low, pink Rag•picking de luxe lives hand to mouth, subsisting in a slum plastic stool, behind a mound of unsorted In San Francisco, Mr Ruiz works for Norcal on 100 rupees a day with the help of a local goods which she is gradually dividing into Waste Systems, which handles most of the charity. Yet they both do the same job: sort• smaller piles. Copper wiring goes in one city’s household rubbish. Some days he ing through the local rubbish, trying to sal• heap, aluminium foil in another. Iron and stands by a conveyor belt in a huge ware• vage goods that can be re•used. The stark steel is divided by thickness; the heftier house, picking wood, cardboard, plaster• di erences in their circumstances say a lot pieces fetch a higher price. The same goes board and metal out of demolition debris. about the global business of recycling. for plastic bags. Cloth, leather, Tetra Paks‹ The belt moves quite fast, so only the big• In India, recycling provides a livelihood each has its own pile. Coconut shells go gest pieces can be retrieved. The rest falls for millions. Most urban households do into a bag hanging from the rafters. into a skip, to be hauled o to a land†ll. not throw out unwanted paper, plastic and Another woman comes in, carrying a At other times he drives a bulldozer in metal. Instead, they save it and sell it to itin• load of plastic bottles several times her Œthe pit, where rubbish trucks dump San erant traders called kabari•wallahs who own size on her head. She will sort it by Francisco’s household waste, to be loaded come to call at regular intervals. The re• type of plastic and by colour. In another onto bigger trucks also headed for the maining waste is picked over by the clean• part of the shed a third woman stands land†ll. In theory, residents have already ers and watchmen at the apartment block separated out anything that is recyclable or they live in before being put out in a mu• biodegradable. In practice, many do not nicipal skip where rag•pickers like Mrs Hi• bother. Lots of plastic bottles and paper yale search through it again. When trucks can be seen through the muddle and deliver the rubbish from these skips to grime. A study commissioned by Norcal dumps such as Deonar, more rag•pickers found that 70% of the material going into comb over it yet again. the pit could have been recycled. Mumbai is thought to be home to hun• In another cathedral•like warehouse by dreds of thousands of rag•pickers. No municipal Pier 96, Norcal sorts the stu lo• wonder that until recently Mrs Hiyale cal residents put into their recycling bins. could not count on a steady income. What An impossibly complicated network of she earned depended on how much she conveyor belts, chutes and tubes whizzes found scouring the streets and rummaging the trash this way and that. Machines sep• through the skips of the suburb of Ghatko• arate out di erent materials, in much the par, where she lives, and the price her dis• same way as Mrs Hiyale and her fellow coveries fetched. Most of the time she took rag•pickers do back in Mumbai. A magnet in less than 100 rupees a day. She had be• lifts up any iron and steel. A gadget called come a rag•picker decades ago when a an Œeddy•current separator causes other drought struck Mumbai’s rural hinterland, metals, such as aluminium and copper, to forcing her and her husband to abandon jump, literally, o the line into di erent the land they farmed and seek work in the bins. A series of whirling discs arranged city. ŒEvery day was a bad day, she says. into a steep slope carries the lighter goods‹ A few years ago Mrs Hiyale came across mainly paper‹upwards but allows heavi• Stree Mukti Sanghatana, a feminist charity er ones to fall. Workers pick o phone that seeks to provide female rag•pickers books, glass and plastic bottles. (the vast majority) with more stability and Yet despite all this clever kit, the sorting security. Now she retrieves the rubbish of at Pier 96 is much less elaborate and pre• apartment blocks that have an arrange• cise than that performed by Mumbai’s rag• ment with the charity and sorts the recy• pickers. Plastic and paper is separated into clable portion in one of its sheds. She still fewer colours and categories; indeed, earns only 100 rupees a day, but at least, many types of plastic are not accepted at she says, she has access to a steady stream It’s a job all. The conveyor belts move too fast to 1 The Economist February 28th 2009 A special report on waste 9

2 catch everything and the workers and ma• chines both make mistakes that they can• not correct. Norcal is constantly striving to recycle more, and to improve the purity of the pro• cessed waste it produces. As it is, the city of San Francisco keeps some 70% of its waste out of land†lls‹one of the highest rates in the world. That †gure is all the more re• markable because almost none of the non• land†ll waste is burned. The city council has set a goal of 75% recycling by next year and hopes eventually to achieve Œzero waste. It has written Norcal’s contract in such a way that the more the †rm recycles, the more money it earns. So Norcal invests in expensive facilities From bottle to bottle such as the one at Pier 96. It runs vigorous campaigns encouraging its customers to reasonably cheap around San Francisco. governments for support. recycle. Its garbage trucks are covered with However, Jared Blumenfeld, head of There is little doubt that recycling is big pictures contrasting mouldering card• the city’s Department of the Environment, good for the environment. In 2006 the board with healthy forests and festering ta• explains that even in California, with its Technical University of Denmark conduct• ble scraps with prospering farms. It in• strict regulation, land†lling involves envi• ed a review of 272 studies comparing the spects its trucks to see which buildings or ronmental costs that the city wants to e ects of recycling with those of land†ll• neighbourhoods are throwing away lots of avoid on principle. Climate change is the ing or incineration. They came up with 188 recyclables and gets its sta to contact the biggest concern. California has adopted scenarios involving di erent materials worst o enders to urge them to be more ambitious targets for reducing emissions, and recycling methods. In 83% of these sce• careful. It even has an artist•in•residence and methane from land†lls makes up 18% narios recycling proved the greener of the programme, designed to show how useful of the city’s emissions. available options. and beautiful junk can be. A recent incum• There has been little detailed cost•bene• For materials such as aluminium, the bent made a dress out of used plastic bags; †t analysis of California’s emissions tar• case is overwhelming. Recycling it requires another tried to express Œour society’s abu• gets, Mr Blumenfeld happily concedes, or only a tiny fraction of the energy con• sive pattern of production and waste by of San Francisco’s aim of zero waste, or of sumed when mining bauxite and re†ning weaving bits of trash together. any of the myriad environmental targets it into the same amount of metal. For other No one knows Mumbai’s recycling rate, set by the city and by the state. Politicians products the bene†ts are more †nely bal• but it seems likely to exceed San Francis• adopt them because they think voters will anced. Glass is heavy, so transporting it co’s, for a simple reason. In Mumbai recy• like the sound of them. And they do: the re• uses up a lot of fossil fuel. Collecting it and cling is a pro†table pursuit for all involved, cycling programme, Mr Blumenfeld says, is grinding it up into aggregate to make roads whereas in San Francisco it costs most resi• even more popular than the mayor, Gavin can consume more energy than taking it to dents money. Indian rag•pickers require no Newsom, who won 72% of the vote at the land†ll. But recycling it to make more bot• wages, equipment or electricity. By con• most recent election. tles generally reaps an energy saving. trast, Norcal has invested $38m in the ma• But there must be a price that even San terials recovery facility (or MRF, in the in• Franciscans would balk at paying to re• The green green glass of home dustry jargon) at Pier 96 and keeps paying duce their waste. Mr Sangiacomo thinks he To recycle glass back into bottles, however, out on running costs. could increase the recycling rate by getting it needs to be sorted by colour. In general, The revenue from Norcal’s MRFs covers the trash in the pit sorted manually, but is the narrower the categories into which re• roughly half their outgoings. Metal is the not sure the city council would approve cyclables are sorted and the more meticu• only material that is consistently pro†table the extra expense. In less high•minded lous the separation, the easier they are to to salvage, says Mike Sangiacomo, Norcal’s places, voters and politicians may well process and the higher the price they fetch. boss. Cardboard usually is; most of the snap their purses shut much sooner. White oˆce paper is worth more than other goods the †rm sends for recycling, in• That is what governments all around mixed paper, for example, and bottles cluding glass, plastic and other types of pa• the rich world are now grappling with. The made from a single kind of plastic are per, usually are not. economic downturn has cut prices for re• worth more than an assortment. The shortfall is covered by Norcal’s cus• cyclables by half or more since last sum• That is where the economics start get• tomers, who pay about $25 a month for mer. The shares of big recycling †rms, such ting tricky. Manual sorting is expensive in waste disposal. Whether that price is as China’s Nine Dragons Paper, have the rich world, which is why recyclables worth paying is a complicated question. plunged over the past year. The American are often shipped to places with low la• The answer depends, among other things, and Canadian arm of Smur†t•Stone, bour costs. It helps that there are lots of al• on the cost of alternative disposal meth• which makes recycled cardboard, has †led most empty container ships sailing back to ods and the value ascribed to the environ• for bankruptcy. Some traders have been re• Asia after unloading consumer goods in mental bene†ts. At the most basic level, re• duced to stockpiling their wares in the Europe and America: they will usually car• cycling competes with land†lling. That is hope that prices will rise. Others are asking ry secondhand paper and plastic for a 1 10 A special report on waste The Economist February 28th 2009

2 song. After preliminary sorting at Pier 96, grammes, America’s recycling rate dou• dair James, its director of recycling, waste for example, many of San Francisco’s sal• bled between 1995 and 2005, to 32%. Over and packaging, is to use recycled ones. vaged materials are loaded straight into the same period Europe’s, which started at Most of the bottles Closed Loop is cur• containers bound for China, where they 22%, rose to 41%. rently recycling would otherwise have will be combed over much more thor• MRFs are getting more sophisticated all been shipped to China to be transformed oughly before being recycled. the time. At a plant on the outskirts of Lon• into lower•grade plastic for cheap hard The biggest American exporter by vol• don a †rm called Closed Loop Recycling hats, arti†cial ‡eeces and the like. But such ume is a †rm called American Chung sorts plastic bottles before recycling them. Œdowncycling tends to be much less prof• Nam. In 2007 it sent o 211,300 containers One machine uses optical scanning to itable than genuine recycling, and much of waste paper for recycling, almost all of work out what sort of plastic the bottles more vulnerable to price swings. Closed them to its sister company in China, Nine are made of. Blasts of air from a line of noz• Loop is still making money. It plans to build Dragons Paper. There were six other recy• zles then direct each one to the appropriate a second plant this year, despite the eco• cling †rms among the 20 biggest exporters. bin. This device can cope with only a few nomic gloom. In 2006 CyclOpe estimated the value of di erent categories and often makes mis• Closed Loop’s success did not come the international trade in recyclables at takes. But another machine in the plant, about by chance. The Waste and Resources well over $100 billion. which uses a laser to scan the passing ma• Action Programme (WRAP), a govern• terial, can sort plastic by type and colour ment•funded agency charged with reduc• Sort it yourself with great accuracy. ing land†lling, among other worthy goals, Another way to make recycling cheaper is This process, says Chris Dow, Closed helped to pay for the initial trial of the recy• to get the household or business that gen• Loop’s managing director, was Œa lab trial cled bottles. It also helped to bring together erates the waste to sort it free of charge. two years ago. The †rm is now taking part Closed Loop, Veolia (which supplies the This is done without demur in much of Eu• in a new trial to see whether similar de• used bottles), the retailers that buy the re• rope and Asia, where municipalities often vices can separate mixed plastics of all cycled plastic and the banks that †nanced collect paper, plastics, metal and glass sep• kinds rather than just bottles. That would the plant. It is now providing similar help arately. (Consumers can be further encour• dramatically improve the economics of re• with the attempt to sort mixed plastics. aged to return cans or bottles by including cycling items of marginal value, such as yo• WRAP’s aim is to harness market forces a deposit in their price.) But the Anglo•Sax• gurt pots. Thanks to such advances, says rather than †ght them. By getting munici• on world dislikes sorting its own waste Mr Dow, the number of things that can be palities and waste †rms together it can en• and often makes a hash of it. In San Fran• pro†tably recycled will keep expanding. sure big and steady enough streams of dif• cisco Mr Newsom wants to oblige resi• But Closed Loop can a ord such fancy ferent materials to justify investment in dents to keep organic waste out of their kit only because there is a strong market for new recycling plants. By pooling potential rubbish bins. Originally he proposed †nes its product: plastic of suˆcient quality to buyers of recycled goods it helps to pro• of up to $1,000 for persistent o enders, but be used to package food. British retailers vide those plants with suˆcient custom• this caused such outrage that the †gure are keen to increase the amount of recy• ers. And its involvement helps to reassure was reduced to $100. Even so, says Mr Blu• cled material in their packaging, partly be• the investors. menfeld, the policy is unlikely to be vigor• cause it is slightly cheaper than the virgin But the most e ective policy would be ously enforced. sort but mainly because their customers to incorporate the costs of the pollution Most cities in America are allowing are keen on the idea. Tesco, Britain’s biggest caused by gathering and processing virgin their citizens to throw anything recyclable retailer, advertises a line of school uni• materials into their prices. That would into a single bin, to be sorted out at an MRF forms made from recycled polyester. One align environmental goals with business like the one at Pier 96 in San Francisco. of the ways it has responded to the grow• ones, sparing governments the trouble of Thanks in part to the spread of such pro• ing clamour against plastic bags, says Alas• trying to balance the recyclers’ books. 7 Muck and brass

The waste business smells of money

ECYCLING aside, waste †rms often de• bish and China’s over 200% more over the waste is collected and tighten the rules Rscribe themselves as recession•proof. same period. That increase will come about disposal. For example, India’s Su• The logic is simple: their workload is al• partly from a growing amount of waste preme Court has ruled that all cities of ways increasing. As countries get richer generated per person but mainly from a 100,000 people or more should provide a and more urban and their populations ex• rising urban population. Overall, Nickolas waste•collection service. The Indian gov• pand, they throw away ever more stu . Themelis of Columbia University expects ernment, for its part, has set guidelines and The OECD forecasts that although munici• worldwide waste to double by 2030. targets for treatment and is working on a pal waste in rich countries will grow only Growing wealth generally goes hand in law on e•waste. At present these rules are by a fairly sedate average of 1.3% a year up hand with more concern for the local envi• observed mainly in the breach, but with to 2030, or about 38% in all, India’s city• ronment. In time, governments in develop• time and public pressure compliance dwellers will be generating 130% more rub• ing countries will make sure that more should grow. 1 The Economist February 28th 2009 A special report on waste 11

the rich world, too, because ever stricter instead spent $6 billion buying the second• Junk holds its own 4 regulations are helping to make up for the biggest, Allied Waste Industries. The two Total-return index slower growth in waste volumes. On the remaining †rms have a combined market January 1st 2007=100, ¤ terms whole, says Henri Proglio, the boss of Veo• share of 41%, according to Standard & lia Environnement, the more complicated Poor’s, a rating agency. 120 SGI Global Waste Management the treatment, the higher the margin. 110 Between 1985 and 2005, as America’s It just keeps coming 100 regulations got tighter and small land†lls For such big, integrated †rms, waste is also went out of business, average tipping fees a very stable business. Although house• 90 rose from less than $10 per tonne to almost holds and businesses produce somewhat 80 $35. But the European Union is probably less rubbish in tough economic times, the MSCI World 70 the most zealous regulator: it has separate decline in volume is usually only a per• legally binding Œdirectives on waste poli• centage point or two, says Mr Parker of the 60 cy in general, hazardous waste, the tran• National Solid Wastes Management Asso• 50 sportation of waste, pollution control, ciation. And contracts often run for long 2007 08 09 land†lls, incinerators, and a host of specif• periods. Four Winds Capital Management, Sources: Thomson Datastream; Société Générale ic sorts of waste, from cars to packaging to an investment †rm that is setting up a electronic goods. That has helped to push waste•industry fund, reckons that the aver• 2 In rich and poor countries alike the au• average tipping fees much higher than age length of a collection contract is seven thorities are increasingly inclined to en• America’s: ¤74 a tonne in France, for exam• years; of a disposal contract, nine years; trust waste management to the private sec• ple, and ¤50 in Italy, according to CyclOpe. and of an integrated contract, 17 years. No tor. That re‡ects not just the economic The big waste•industry companies wel• wonder that the big †rms’ earnings are still orthodoxy of recent decades but also the come tighter regulation. Unlike the tid• growing nicely. Shares of listed waste †rms rising cost of complying with ever stricter dlers, they can a ord the investment need• have also su ered less than most in the re• environmental rules. In Britain municipal• ed to comply with it. The search for cent downturn (see chart 4). ities have been obliged to hold public ten• economies of scale has led to dramatic Waste †rms often have multiple rev• ders for waste management since 1989. In consolidation in recent decades. In Britain, enue streams, which can also help them America private †rms dispose of roughly between 1992 and 2001the market share of weather a downturn. A waste•to•energy 70% of all waste. The more go•ahead cities the 15 biggest companies rose from 30% to †rm, for example, earns Œgate fees for tak• in China, including Beijing, Shanghai and 60%. In America consolidation is still in ing the waste in the †rst place, as well as Guangzhou, have handed some rubbish• progress. Last year the third•biggest waste payments for the power it generates and disposal contracts to private †rms. †rm, Republic Services, spurned an o er any metals it recovers from the ash. Recy• Mumbai o ers a good example of the from the biggest, Waste Management, and cling †rms are the obvious exception, but way things are going. Its collection rate is even they deal in a variety of goods whose already well above the Indian average of prices do not always move in lockstep. 60%. Its environmental standards are also Concern about global warming should rising. Although almost all its waste cur• provide a big boost for the waste business rently goes to municipally owned dumps in the future. Methane from land†lls ac• such as Deonar, with almost no pollution counts for only about 4% of greenhouse controls, the city plans to transform them gases, but it can be dealt with relatively into sanitary land†lls and to build a new, cheaply and easily. Recycling tends to con• greener facility from scratch. It is also in• sume less energy than making goods from stalling equipment to collect methane and scratch, which helps to curb emissions. leachate at a recently closed dump, Gorai. Cities are particularly keen to tackle The role of the private sector is growing: land†ll gas, says Mr Blumenfeld of San the local government has brought in con• Francisco’s Department of Environment, sultants for the Gorai project and hopes to because it is one of the few sources of involve private partners in the land†ll emissions over which they have jurisdic• schemes. It is already using contractors to tion. And in places that do not have much take most waste to its dumps. heavy industry it can make quite a large One big Indian city, Chennai, has con• contribution to total emissions: in San tracted out its rubbish collection to Veolia Francisco its share is 18%. Environnement, one of the giants of the In many countries power from land†ll waste industry, which has a number of gas or waste•to•energy plants (like the one contracts in developing countries, includ• at Spittelau, outside Vienna, illustrated ing Brazil, South Africa and China. Its main here) attracts subsidies of one kind or an• rival, Suez Environnement, is active in Chi• other because it saves emissions. In the de• na, Morocco and elsewhere. Covanta, the veloping world it can earn UN•backed car• world’s biggest waste•to•energy †rm, al• bon credits, which can be sold to ready runs one facility in China and has governments or †rms that must reduce several more in the works. their emissions under the Kyoto protocol. Waste †rms see ample opportunities in Artful Spittelau Mumbai, for one, plans to sell such credits 1 12 A special report on waste The Economist February 28th 2009

2 when its land†ll•gas project at Gorai China currently incinerates only 2% of its ing it heavily. The tax rose by £8 per tonne comes on stream. rubbish, but has set itself a goal of 30% by in April last year, to £32 ($46, ¤37), and is set Firms such as Covanta see worries 2030. That will involve an investment of at to rise by a further £8 both this year and about climate change as a spur to waste•to• least $6.3 billion, according to New Energy next. In a country that still sends over half energy projects. Incineration could save Finance, a research out†t. Even America is its waste to land†ll, municipalities and up to a gigatonne of emissions if widely thinking again: in 20•odd states that re• businesses are desperate to †nd other adopted, says Covanta’s boss, Anthony quire utilities to generate a proportion of ways of disposing of their rubbish. Orlando. That is about one•seventh of the their power from renewable sources, No wonder, then, that so many of them current global total. Already, the world’s waste•to•energy plants count towards the are experimenting with avant•garde tech• 700•odd waste•to•energy plants generate goal. Mr Themelis reckons it could supply nologies. The government estimates that more power than all its wind turbines and as much as 4% of the country’s electricity. meeting the target will require £10 billion solar panels put together. But it is Britain that currently o ers the of investment. As one entrepreneur puts it, Japan and Singapore burn more than biggest incentives to waste †rms. Trying to Britain is Œbeachfront property for any• 50% of their municipal waste. Burning is meet a target set by one of those European one with a nifty new waste•processing also popular in many European countries. directives, it discourages land†lling by tax• technology to sell. 7 Less is more

The ultimate in waste disposal is to tackle the problem at source

IEBEN LINDEN, a hamlet in former East another’s hand•me•downs. Unwanted rate slowed to 0.9%. That was just ahead of SGermany, half•way between Hamburg possessions are left out for others to help the rate of population growth (0.7%), but and Berlin, looks deceptively normal. themselves. well behind the rate of economic growth There is a cluster of houses, some †elds, a Carefree consumption is not actually (2.2%). The OECDdescribes this as Œa rather few cars parked by the side of the road and forbidden, though it would raise eye• strong relative decoupling of municipal a small shop, all set against the backdrop of brows, says Eva Stützel, who helped to waste generation from economic growth, a looming pine forest. found Sieben Linden over a decade ago. although it expresses some misgivings Closer inspection, however, reveals a But the main reason the inhabitants buy about the reliability of the data. The Euro• few peculiarities. Several of the modern• less and waste less is that they have a rich pean Union has detected a similar trend in looking buildings turn out to be made of community life which does not revolve several European countries, as has Cy• wood, straw and mud. There are huge around trips to shops, restaurants and cin• clOpe, the research institute. quantities of logs, because wood•†red emas. They go ice•skating on a nearby Reducing the amount of waste being stoves and boilers provide all the heating, pond in winter and swimming in summer; produced makes a great deal of sense, pro• and quite a few solar panels, which gener• they teach one another horseriding and vided it does not cost more, in either envi• ate most of the electricity. And there are yoga and tai chi; they put on plays and con• ronmental or †nancial terms, than dispos• more young people around than usual in certs and seminars. ing of it in the usual way. Governments rural Germany. Sieben Linden, a self•pro• The idea, explains Kosha Joubert, an• hope it might help to trim both green• claimed eco•village, is growing fast, unlike other resident, is not to adopt a dreary, as• house•gas emissions and waste•manage• the surrounding towns. cetic lifestyle but to demonstrate that it is ment costs. But they are not sure how best The 120 inhabitants have decided to live possible to live in a green manner without to encourage it. in as green a manner as possible. They are undue sacri†ce or disruption. Western ur• Some are trying to persuade consumers trying to wean themselves o fossil fuels, banites could easily adopt elements of the to throw away less. The simplest method is grow their own food and timber, acquire eco•village lifestyle, she says, by forming to collect the rubbish less often. In areas of fewer frivolous possessions and produce car pools, say, or shopping co•operatives. Britain where the dustmen come round less waste. Food comes either from their only every other week, recycling rates are own †elds or from wholesalers, so there is Tipping point 10% higher than elsewhere. no need for much packaging. Any scraps Until recently most people in the waste in• Another tactic is to make households are composted. Urine from the toilets is di• dustry had assumed that it was impossible pay by volume for the rubbish they gener• verted to a reedbed for natural puri†ca• to reduce the amount being produced and ate, rather than through a ‡at fee or tion, and the faeces are turned into com• were concentrating on putting the stu to through local taxes. Many places in Eu• post for the community’s forest. better use. But lately that assumption has rope, America and Asia have adopted The residents live separately but share been challenged. For one thing, the pace at Œpay•as•you•throw schemes. (In Taiwan, big appliances such as washing machines which the rich world churns out rubbish householders even have to chuck their and cars. Before buying a new tool, say, has been slowing. own rubbish into the truck.) About a quar• they will put a note into the community’s Between 1980 and 2000 the amount of ter of Americans live in communities with logbook to ask if anybody has one they waste produced by the OECD countries in• such programmes. The EPA reckons that could borrow. If not, they will probably creased by an average of 2.5% a year. Be• they reduce the volume of rubbish by buy one secondhand. They often wear one tween 2000 to 2005 the average growth 14•27% and increase recycling (which usu•1 The Economist February 28th 2009 A special report on waste 13

2 ally remains free) by 32•59%. years alone. That means savings not only compulsory waste•reduction schemes. There are drawbacks. Fly•tipping‹the on the metal itself but also on transport Some levy fees on certain products, akin to illegal dumping of waste‹tends to rise and even cooling: thinner cans chill faster. bottle deposits, to ensure they are dis• slightly as people try to avoid paying. And Oˆcials in the EU, in particular, are posed of safely. Thirty•six states in Ameri• householders generally grumble a lot if keen to hurry lightweighting along. ca, for example, charge for the disposal of they have to pay extra to have their rub• WRAP, the British agency charged with re• tyres. The states spend the money on bish collected. Some communities have re• ducing waste, is trying to promote it for va• clean•up programmes or pay others to run sponded by o ering rebates to those who rious sorts of packaging. It funded trials of such programmes. Many of the tyres are throw away less‹a more palatable way of a lightweight pull•tab lid for food tins, blended into road surfaces or burned in ce• packaging the same idea. But most local which it believes could save 15,000 tonnes ment kilns. Several other states have Œad• authorities have simply decided against of steel each year in Britain alone. Heinz, a vance recovery fees for computer moni• the idea. When the British government of• giant food manufacturer which took part tors and televisions. So have Japan, South fered them money to experiment with in the trial, hopes that adopting the new Korea and Taiwan, among others, and Chi• pay•as•you•throw schemes earlier this lids will save it £400,000 a year. WRAP has na is working on a scheme. year, not one signed up. conducted similar tests of thinner glass The problem with fee programmes is Businesses are generally seen as a softer and plastic bottles, with equally promising that all goods in a category are subject to target than consumers. It can be argued results. the same charge, whether they are easy or that manufacturers bear some responsibil• WRAP also cajoled Britain’s biggest su• hard to get rid of. That gives manufacturers ity for the amount of waste rich countries permarkets and food suppliers into signing no incentive to build easy disposal into the produce. They often have an incentive to a voluntary agreement to halt the growth design of a product. reduce waste anyway, since most already in packaging by last year and start reducing One answer is to ban certain sub• pay for disposal by volume. There is even a it from 2010. Last July it announced that the stances outright, thereby eliminating the name for the steady reduction in materials initial target had been met, despite a 1.8% need to dispose of them later. A number of used to make the same goods: Œlight• rise in sales. Some †rms are going much places, from San Francisco to the tiny Hi• weighting. It is not only electronic gadgets further: in 2007 Tesco pledged to reduce its malayan kingdom of Bhutan, have banned that have become smaller and lighter over packaging by a quarter by 2010. or severely restricted the use of plastic the years even as their performance has In theory, consumers could steer †rms bags. The EU barred the use of several improved but many other things too, from towards waste reduction by buying pro• heavy metals and ‡ame retardants in elec• cars to plastic bags. ducts that are easy to recycle, say, or have tronic goods in 2006 and recently pro• The average aluminium drink can is only minimal packaging. To some extent posed expanding the scheme. Several now only half as thick as it was in the this is happening. Tesco’s Alasdair James American states were so impressed that 1960s, according to Molson Coors, the †rm says British consumers rank the environ• they have copied the EU’s rules. that introduced this type of container in ment as their third priority after price and 1959. Its American subsidiary has reduced convenience. But many governments are Return to sender the weight of its cans by 7% in the past †ve trying to give greenery an extra push with But the EU has gone further, applying a concept called Œextended producer re• sponsibility to an ever•expanding list of items including cars and computers. At its simplest, this means that manufacturers have to take back their products without charge when consumers have †nished with them. The EU’s directive on Œend•of• life vehicles not only obliges manufactur• ers to accept vehicles that are no longer wanted, but also requires them to recycle or re•use 80% of the parts by weight, a pro• portion that will rise to 85% by 2015. The manufacturers can farm out the job, but only to authorised †rms. Hewlett•Packard (HP), which makes lots of electronic devices that are subject to such rules, says it welcomes them. It has al• ways tried to design its products not just from cradle to grave, a spokesman ex• plains, but from cradle to cradle‹meaning with recycling in mind. Its laptops are 90% recyclable and its printers at least 70%. By last year HP had recycled over 450,000 tonnes of used equipment. It aims to dou• ble that †gure by the end of next year. At its facility in Roseville, California, workers A lifestyle choice at Sieben Linden †rst check discarded computers and print•1 14 A special report on waste The Economist February 28th 2009

2 ers to see if they can be re•used: it refur• Recycling produces far fewer greenhouse bishes 2.5m devices a year. The rest are tak• gases, but recycling †rms do not get much en to bits. First the big, accessible parts are bene†t out of that because their rivals pay removed, along with anything dangerous, little or nothing for the emissions they pro• and then heavy•duty shredders grind up duce. In e ect, governments are subsidis• the remainder into tiny pieces that can be ing the use of raw materials by failing to sorted by standard recycling equipment. charge big energy users for the emissions An engineer explains how a decade of they cause. Scrapping that subsidy would such work has taught HP how to make the provide recycling †rms with a big boost. process simpler and cheaper. It now uses Above all, regulators should be con• screws instead of glues wherever possible, scious of the costs of the rules they lay and has reduced the number of di erent down. Blanket bans, 100% targets and pu• kinds of plastic in its products from 200 to nitive taxes are usually a sign of dogma• †ve. It plans to eliminate one more‹poly• tism. It cannot be desirable for California vinyl chloride‹from new computer mod• It doesn’t have to be like this to recycle absolutely everything. There els this year. It is proud of having closed must be some waste that is better burnt or the loop on ink cartridges for its printers, in Congress. Similarly, governments buried. Construction and demolition, for which it now makes from old cartridges. should pay more attention to waste that example, produce lots of inert waste that But the †rm would like to go further, de• winds up in the sea, even if it falls outside can be cheaper to put into land†ll than to signing computers so that they can be easi• their formal jurisdiction. Œdowncycle into lower•value construc• ly upgraded rather than replaced. Ulti• Emissions of greenhouse gases and tion materials. And there is nothing wrong mately, says Chandrakant Patel, who other noxious chemicals are a worry. But with burning wood or even some plastics, heads its Œsustainable IT ecosystems lab• instead of banning or heavily taxing par• provided the right pollution controls are in oratory, modern computer systems will ticular waste•disposal technologies to re• place. Politicians should prize value for allow †rms to calculate the precise dispo• duce the emissions they produce, govern• money above political correctness or rhe• sal costs of a product during the design ments should tax or limit emissions in torical ‡ourish. phase and include them in the sale price. general. That would steer investors to• Still, in their muddled and heavy•hand• More sophisticated products will also wards the cleanest technologies, whatever ed way, governments are groping towards warn users when they are about to fail, they might be. Thus, instead of clamping the idea of making the polluter pay by in• eliminating the need for spare capacity. down on land†lls because of the methane ternalising the cost of responsible waste they produce, or incinerators for fear of disposal. That is surely the right way to go. Think before you legislate dioxins, governments should tackle meth• If governments oblige manufacturers to in• Sadly, however, that sort of world is still a ane and dioxins across the board. If land• clude the cost of disposal in their prices, long way o . Governments are wildly in• †lls and incinerators can meet the stan• †rms will pass those costs on to consum• consistent in their approach to extended dards they set, they should be welcomed. ers, who will have an incentive to buy the producer responsibility. They tend to Putting a price on greenhouse•gas emis• products that are the easiest to dispose of home in on particular products without sions would also help to promote recy• and therefore cheapest. All this should pro• justi†cation (tyres, after all, are not among cling. At the moment, it is often cheaper to vide a spur to the waste industry and the biggest threats to the planet). Their process virgin materials, despite the extra speed the adoption of new technology. goals seem arbitrary too: how did the EU energy required, because collecting and Firms like HP have seen the writing on the decide that 85% of car parts had to be recy• sorting recyclables is so labour•intensive. wall: waste is heading for a redesign. 7 cled, not 84% or 86%? And why should the deadline be 2015, not some other year? O er to readers Oˆcial thinking about waste in general Future special reports Reprints of this special report are available at a Countries and regions seems equally confused. Why levy depos• price of £3.50 plus postage and packing. The euro area June 13th its to encourage the recycling of glass bot• A minimum order of †ve copies is required. tles but not plastic ones? Why control the Business, †nance, economics and ideas Corporate o er disposal of municipal waste in such detail Customisation options on corporate orders of 100 Entrepreneurship March 14th but allow utilities to pile up coal ash un• or more are available. Please contact us to discuss The rich April 4th challenged? Why tax and regulate land†lls your requirements. Health care and technology April 18th out of all proportion to the damage they do International banking May 16th Send all orders to: to the environment? The individual poli• Business in America May 30th cies do not add up to a grand design. The Rights and Syndication Department A desire to reduce the amount of waste 26 Red Lion Square WC1R 4HQ being produced and to minimise the harm London Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 it does is all well and good, but govern• Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 ments must be sure to encourage those e•mail: [email protected] ends by the cheapest and most eˆcient means. Plugging loopholes in the rules is a For more information and to order special reports Previous special reports and a list of good †rst step. American oˆcials should and reprints online, please visit our website forthcoming ones can be found online be much stricter about coal•ash tips, re• www.economist.com/rights www.economist.com/specialreports gardless of how much clout utilities have