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25 November 2011

Are you ready for a resource crunch?

I had a very interesting day at the North East Recycling Forum annual conference yesterday. I don't attend a lot of events I'm not speaking at these days, but I wanted to catch up with the network members. To my delight the emerging theme from the speakers was one of my current hot topics - a possible 'resource crunch'. The killer question is are we focussing too much on outputs (waste, pollution, carbon emissions) at the exclusion of inputs (raw material, energy, water etc)?

The idea of a 'resource war' was mentioned more than once, meaning either commercial battles between companies for ever decreasing pools of virgin material, or indeed actual shooting-at-each-other battles between nations trying to protect their economic interests. Global extraction of resources are projected to hit double 1980 rates by 2020. Mineral ores are the fastest riser - predicted to rise by 200% over this period compared to an 81% increase in oil consumption. As a result, many resources are starting to become hard to get hold of: oil, rare earth metals, platinum group metals etc.

This issue is starting to go from jaw-jaw to war-war on the ground (at least in the commercial sense) - a number of manufacturing giants are starting to invest in the recycling industry to ensure a flow of materials into the future. Renault have bought into metal reprocessors. David Palmer-Jones, CEO of waste company SITA, told us that they themselves were investing in plastic-to-diesel plants to hedge against the risk of rising oil prices to their own operations.

There's a big challenge for the recycling industry here - to shift mindset from waste diversion to raw material production There's a threat too as, if they don't make the shift, they could get left behind those who do either from within the industry or manufacturers setting up their own functions (eg InterfaceFLOR's carpet recycling). I asked the question how far along this path the waste industry had gone - the CEO of the Chartered Institute of Waste Managers, Steve Lee, said he believes they are "in the early stages of a quiet revolution."

Lastly there's the much bigger risk to the manufacturers themselves. Many modern technologies, from high performance steels to the ubiquitous iPhone, rely on elements whose whose traditional sources are dwindling. There are three choices: find a substitute material, start sourcing recovered material, or stick your head in the sand and hope for a miracle. I don't recommend the last one.

Tags: closed loop economy, raw materials, recycling, resources, risk

Posted by Gareth Kane one response

21 October 2011

Waste Is A Verb, Not A Noun

Here's the latest in my Green Business Confidential podcast series. It's called "Waste is a verb, not a noun" and it is all about the effect of the word 'waste' on us psychologically - but don't worry, I don't get too metaphysical on you all.

Or, you can download it here and listen on your MP3 player:

GBC10 Waste Is A Verb, Not A Noun

You can get the whole podcast series here or subscribe on iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: industrial symbiosis, podcast, recycling, waste

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

15 September 2011

Closing the Loop - from Outputs to Inputs

Traditionally we have worried about what comes out of our economy - solid wastes, persistent toxins, greenhouse gases, acid rain, ozone and so on. But increasingly focus is shifting to the sustainability of inputs - energy, water and raw materials - as these factors have a much bigger and immediate impact on business viability. Let's face it, no water = no business, no energy = no business, no raw materials = no business.

You may not have noticed as there was a wedding on TV that weekend, but back in June, Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency - the go to guy for the lowdown on energy for Governments - said that oil production may have peaked back in 2006. If you have filled up your car recently, the resulting bill was probably bad for your health - and energy prices are impacting on food and clothing prices - not good news in the current financial turmoil. Then we have China buying up rare earth metal supplies and various NGOs flagging up water stresses across the world.

So what's the answer? Well, in nature, if a leaf falls off a tree it is recycled by worms, fungi and/or bacteria into nutrients for that tree or another plant, creating a cycle of nutrients. Same with water, carbon, nitrogen and other key materials - they all move in cycles. This is how nature's processes have evolved over billions of years to be sustainable in a world of finite resources.

Carpet tile giants and green business pioneers InterfaceFLOR realised this some time ago. To become sustainable - their goal is zero impact on the environment - they obviously have to source sustainable raw materials. While they are using some natural materials to replace the traditional oil-based fibres, this would not cover all inputs. So they decided to use waste carpet as a raw material. While their 'Evergreen' carpet leasing service has failed to set the market alight (apparently accountants can't handle carpet as a revenue cost rather than a capital cost - photocopiers and vehicles yes, but carpets no...), their 'Re-entry 2.0' carpet recycling facility has been a roaring success.

There are countless other opportunities for this kind of thinking. I am reliably informed that road sweepings have a higher concentration of platinum than that in naturally occuring ores due to all those catalytic converters in our cars releasing lots of tiny amounts. So people are working on the technology to 'mine' those materials from our streets and return them to the economy. Likewise there is great interest in 'mining' obsolete mobile phones for the precious metals within.

This requires a big shift in thinking away from outputs and towards inputs. Recovery and recycling are traditionally seen as waste management options rather than as sources of high quality raw materials - so quality suffers. The current prevalence of virgin raw materials means that such 'secondary' materials also tend to suffer from low volumes, high prices and lack of competition. Forward-thinking companies like Marks & Spencer are actively working to strengthen these new supply chains by increasing volumes, demanding higher quality of materials and encouraging a diversity of suppliers. The recycled polyester brolly pictured is a result of these efforts.

When stuff we rely on starts running out, we'll thank these pioneers for their foresight.

Tags: green procurement, raw materials, recycling, sustainability

Posted by Gareth Kane 3 responses

27 May 2011

The Waste Hierarchy ain't carved in stone

I was at the North East Recycling Forum (NERF) yesterday - catching up with contacts and the latest in the waste industry. One of the interesting points coming out was that the new Waste (England & Wales) Regulations 2011 - to give them their full title - now enshrine the waste hierarchy. Whether this is a tick box exercise or not, what I always find interesting is that nobody ever subjects the waste hierarchy to the Toddler Test and asks "why?".

Let's get one thing straight. The waste hierarchy is simply a rule of thumb. It has no basis in science or economics whatsoever.

Some people look at me as if I have blasphemed when I say that.

Take nature. Nature is very inefficient - a birch tree releases 15-17 million seeds every year, but at best only a few saplings will result. What happens to all the millions of 'wasted' seeds? They are recycled as nutrients back into the system. The waste hierarchy says we should prioritise minimising waste over recycling, yet clearly nature does the opposite - preferring recycling over minimisation. And nature is sustainable, we're not.

I'm not just being a smart alec here - there are practical scenarios where religious adherence to the hierarchy will end up in a suboptimal result. Say you produce 11 tonnes of a particular waste a week and you can get any amount over 10 tonnes collected and put to good use by a recycling company, it makes no economic or environmental sense to invest in a new technology which only produces 9 tonnes if that 9 tonnes ends up being landfilled at a higher cost because no-one can afford to collect and recycle it. I have seen a similar situation happen in reality.

As with all rules of thumb, the waste hierarchy should always be used in conjunction with a dose of common sense. In fact the new legislation does have a caveat which allows companies to ignore the hierarchy if they can demonstrate good environmental reasons to do so. Very wise.

Tags: legislation, recycling, toddler test, waste hierarchy

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

16 March 2011

Forestry, waste wood and business

Yesterday I ran a workshop on waste wood business opportunities for the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme's North East team. Industrial symbiosis is the concept of 'waste' from companies becoming the raw material feeds for other industrial process as a rule rather than as an exception.

Despite thick fog and a difficult to reach, if plush, location - Slaley Hall on the edge of the North Penines - we had a great turnout and a real buzz. Business cards were being exchanged left, right and centre as we went through the brainstorming process. When I say brainstorming, we did it properly - no Powerpoint at all. We used the mind map above, printed onto huge A0 sheets, colour coded Post-Its, and a simple system of ID codes to track who was offering or wanted what. I've included the map above as the recycling PESTLE analysis I created for an event last summer has been very popular with readers and Googlers. Click on it for a bigger version.

The wider wood project has been very interesting. We were originally inspired to look at wood by some examples of industrial symbiosis in the Finnish forest industry, but to be honest, when we compared those examples and what's going on in North East England carefully, there wasn't much of a difference. What difference there is is shrinking fast as economics is closing the loops of waste from the virgin wood industry - bark, sawdust, offcuts etc - so we've shifted emphasis to post-user wood. This situation was confirmed visually during the workshop as there were lots of Post-Its on the right of the mindmap, and precious few on the left.

Big issues on the right hand side are persuading waste producers not to landfill waste, the tension between waste wood as fuel and waste wood as a raw material (and Govt subsidies for the former) and sometimes contradictory legislation. Having said that, the sector seems to be booming - and the local players certainly have more to go on after the workshop.

Tags: industrial symbiosis, recycling, wood, workshop facilitation

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

14 February 2011

The value of stuff

"We want to treat waste as a resource." is a constant refrain from the great and the good, but how do we make that happen?

The obvious approach is to try and create robust markets in secondary (recycled, recovered, pre-loved?) materials. The problem is that all commodity prices vary massively and extremely rapidly in the modern global economy. My cousins are farmers and they have to buy their seed and fertiliser long before they have a clue what wheat prices will be like at harvest - this year they did OK because of the terrible problems that Russian farmers had, but next year - who knows?

Recyclate prices can vary even more as they can go from positive to negative. You can see this very visually with scrap metal - if the value drops too low, scrap yards put on a gate fee and you will start to see abandoned old cars dumped on the road. When the price soars, anything metal starts to go missing - a couple of months ago a van was stopped by police in a neighbouring street to mine - with a cargo of half-inched manhole covers in the back.

So how can we deal with this uncertainty?

1. Penalise the alternatives: taxes on the extraction of raw materials or the landfilling of waste level the playing field by internalising the costs to society of those activities.

2. Expand and broaden markets: a steady demand from a wide range of potential markets will even out the peaks and troughs. Organisations both public and private can use their buying power to boost these markets.

3. A realistic view of risk: I've seen far too many start ups build their business plans around unrealistic assumptions on material value/costs and then struggle when the real prices don't comply with their wishful thinking.

4. Use of trusted standards for the quality of materials - the UK Government and its WRAP quango have been working on a set of standards called PAS for some time - eg PAS 100 is the standard for soil conditioner/compost.

5. Use of trusted labels/certification schemes for recycled material - so the customer can make informed purchasing decisions without fear of greenwash.

Overall, though, we need a general change in attitude to 'waste'. As my own little aphorism has it, "Waste is a verb, not a noun".

Tags: eco-label, landfill tax, recycling, scrap metal, waste

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

28 May 2010

Recycling Industry PESTLE Analysis

On Tuesday I was facilitating a workshop on "closing the loop" in the North East of England. To stimulate ideas in the 'future landscape' session, I created the above PESTLE analysis (Politcal, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental). Thought it might be of use to some users (click on it and it should expand).

Tags: pestle, recycling

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

25 March 2009

EEF Report Shows Manufacturing Still Not Proactive on the Environment

Interesting report on the manufacturing sector published by EEF and Envirowise last summer, but being publicised now. Some notable conclusions:

- 90% of respondents were doing something to improve their environmental performance;
- waste and energy are the key issues;
- key drivers are legislation and EMS requirements, rather than competitive advantage;
- preferred method of waste reduction is recycling (80% of respondents) rather than minimisation (18% of respondents);
- 70% of respondents felt Government should provide them more funds to tackle these problems.

Despite the fact that 90% of respondents were acting, the rest of this is rather disappointing. The respondents saw the green agenda as one to react to rather than get proactive on. The lack of interest in minimising waste reflects a lack of awareness of cost saving opportunities, and the expectation that this is the taxpayer's problem to sort out shows a lack of ownership.

The proactive business should acknowledge their environmental impacts and tackle them head-on to improve competitive advantage through reduced costs, better PR and happier staff (see 10 Reasons... for more on this). Looks like we still have a long way to go before a proactive attitude is prevalent.

Tags: eef, energy, envirowise, recycling, waste

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

16 March 2009

Weekly Tip(s) #48: The waste hierarchy is not carved in stone

This is the latest of a series of tips extracted from the Green Business Bible e-book:

OK the waste hierarchy says minimisation is better than recycling, but minimising a large waste stream by a small amount is pointless if it makes recycling the rest uneconomic. The waste hierarchy is just a rule of thumb - apply common sense at all times.

Tags: recycling, site waste management plan, tips, waste hierarchy

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

9 July 2008

The unrecognised recycling sector

On Monday I gave a seminar on carbon footprinting and carbon management (using the Terra Infirma brainstorming tool) at the Association of Charity Shops Annual Conference in Keele. I learnt a lot, as I always do in this trade (I've worked with everyone from multi-national pharmaceutical companies through to a crazy golf course - you pick up all sorts of weird factoids). The sector is a huge, professionally run, and very competitive retail operation, a huge chunk of the reuse industry and a huge source of materials for recyclers. This was not lost on the three recycling companies who sponsored the event.

The seminar went to plan and was well received - despite some shock when we spent half the time actually doing some work. Solutions we generated included checking tyre pressure of vehicles, better use of steamers, buying translucent kettles and even screwing down the thermostat dials. The big contentious issue is open/closed door. As with all shops, open door = more sales but massive energy loss. We didn't resolve this one, but if anyone can think of a solution, post it in the comments.

Tags: carbon footprint, carbon management, charity shops, recycling, retail

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

16 April 2008

Don't be blinded by recycling!

Once again recently I was proudly told by a factory manager "We don't have a waste problem - we recycle 95% of it - isn't that fantastic?". Recycling is great, but your fantastic achievement may be hiding waste reduction opportunities.

Taking a manufacturing business as an example, there are three types of waste:

1. Unavoidable process waste - waste that is intrinsic to your business. If you produce, say, chocolate flavouring from cocoa beans, then you will have cocoa residues left over no matter what. This should be recycled where possible and, if you are really clever, you can adjust your process to maximise its value for recycling/reuse.

2. Avoidable process waste - for example, offcuts, packaging of materials/components, solvents etc. Here you have a choice - eradication, recycling or normal disposal. Soaring landfill taxes are starting to rule out the latter for all but 'difficult materials', so you effectively have a choice of whether to reduce or recycle - that largely comes down to practicalities and economics.

3. Off-spec product (or components) - this is the worst kind of waste as you have added value to it only to throw it away. This waste should be terminated with extreme prejudice - particularly towards the end of your process where the value lost is the highest - I've seen far too many horror shows of good product being sprayed across factory floors by packing machines or careless forklift drivers.

I once heard waste described as "stuff you buy that you can't sell" - a brilliant summation of the economic driver to reduce waste.

Tags: recycling, waste, waste minimisation

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

3 March 2008

Weekly Tip #4: Reposition Your Bins

This is the fourth in a new series of tips extracted from the forthcoming Green Business Bible e-book:

It's always intrigued me that in offices we have a general waste bin by our desks and a recycling bin typically at the end of the corridor. Why not put a paper recycling bin by each desk and a general waste bin further away? Your used paper collection will soar as a result.

Another tip next Monday!

Tags: paper, recycling, tips

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

26 September 2007

The Downside of High Metal Prices

Edie is reporting today that soaring scrap metal prices have lead to thefts from recycling plants and buildings. This confirmed my suspicion that the market was experiencing a boom - in my neighbourhood, manhole covers have recently gone missing and a children's frieze cast in copper was cut up and removed from the local park. It seems a long way from a couple of years ago when the low value of scrap metal was leading to cars being dumped by the roadside by unscrupulous owners wanting to avoid small charges to dispose of their vehicles.

As well as encouraging crime and anti-social behaviour, these severe fluctuations in recyclate prices make operating in the recycling market difficult. Recycling companies keep their gate fees high to mitigate risk, leading to lower recycling rates. This is not well understood by waste producers - I often find myself explaining to small companies that there is little chance that recyclers will collect their waste for free.

Help may come from the Government's announcement of a steep rise in landfill tax - ramping up from the current standard rate of £24/tonne for active wastes (those that give off emissions) to £48/t in 2010/11. This will bring a large number of recycling opportunities into economic viability and, hopefully, help stabilise recyclate markets.

Tags: landfill tax, recycling

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

3 September 2007

New Recycling Support for SMEs

WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Programme) has launched the Recycling @ Work scheme to help Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs)* find ways to recycle their waste. There is an advisor in each of the English Regions plus, N Ireland, Scotland & Wales.

This is great news as it can be extremely difficult for small companies to find cost effective collections - mainly because the amount of waste is too small to make it worth the while of recycling companies dispatching a wagon to get it.

I've always thought that a good solution would be to deliver waste collections at a business park level rather than firm-by-firm, so on one day the same wagon could pick up, say, cardboard from dozens of units on the same round, saving time, fuel and money. Someday I will find a business park owner who wants to give it a go.

* as a rule of thumb, an SME has less than 250 employees and is not part of a larger group of companies.

NOTE: The WRAP Website is down at the time of writing so links may not work... Update - now working fine!

Tags: recycling, SMEs

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

31 August 2007

So just what is waste?

The home page on the Terra Infirma website proclaims "waste is a verb, not a noun". This was a little catchphrase I dreamt up while facilitating Industrial Symbiosis brainstorming sessions. My intention was to get across the idea that most waste has an intrinsic value, but that we choose to waste it.

Unfortunately, out in the real world where environmental legislation applies, this is not the case. Legally, 'waste' is anything a company 'discards or intends to discard'. Once it is designated 'waste', it will not stop being waste until it becomes part of a new product (but not an intermediate). This means that if you make plastic products and you want to buy some clean, pelletised recycled plastic to use as a raw material, you will need a waste management licence.

Even the builders of the 'Brighton Earthship' building, made out of scrap tyres rammed with earth, had to get special permission from the Environment Agency, otherwise the building would be an illegal landfill...

The huge barrier that this puts in the way of recycling has been recognised. The Waste Protocols Project (WPP), run jointly by the Environment Agency and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), is developing standards for recovered product. If material meets the standard then it will no longer be waste and can be traded without further restriction.

In my opinion this process needs urgent accelerating if we are genuine about treating waste as a resource.

5pm Update: I've just heard via edie that Blast Furnace Slag (BFS) will no longer will classed as a waste but a by product. Three million tonnes of this material is produced annually in the UK and it can be used in all sorts of construction products. Very good news indeed.

Tags: industrial symbiosis, recycling, waste

Posted by Gareth Kane no responses

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