Waste minimisation

Waste minimisation or reduction is at the top of the waste hierarchy and is considered by many to be the most important management technique to be applied to waste management.

Waste hierarchy

Despite its importance, most attention to date has been focused on finding ways of dealing with wastes once they have been created rather than avoiding their production. This may be because minimising the quantities of wastes actually produced during a particular process requires specific knowledge of the production process, unlike post-creation management techniques such as re-use, recycling, composting or waste-to-energy initiatives.

General recommendations, while helpful in theory, often contribute little in any individual case, over and above giving pointers regarding possible waste reduction routes. In order to successfully reduce waste volumes, it is first necessary to establish the composition of that waste and the reasons for its creation.

In a commercial situation, some waste may be the result of delivery policies set by a central supply system, or stem from choices made years before on types of machinery employed, which would require considerable investment in new equipment to change.

Since household waste is a very small percentage—typically in Europe perhaps only 6-10%^{[citation needed]}—of total wastes created it is apparent that individuals can have only a small impact on overall waste volumes. Therefore, the biggest contribution to reducing wastes must come from manufacturing industry, from agriculture, and from the construction and demolition sectors.

Waste reduction in industry

Waste reduction is most often sought by means of changing manufacturing procedures, or even changing the type or combination of materials used.

Waste reduction of this nature is, in most cases, worthwhile because there is a double saving:

• it reduces the cost of waste disposal to third parties (including collection, transport, processing, and disposal)
• it reduces the cost of raw materials brought in (including transport and processing)

Thus it makes good business sense and increases the competitiveness and profits of a business. It may be necessary to invest in order to achieve reductions, and consideration has to be given to acceptable pay back periods. It is also necessary to consider if waste reduction in one area will result in increased emissions in another area, i.e. simply not transferring the problem from one environmental medium to another.

There have been a number of government incentives set up to encourage business to look at waste minimisation and to adopt sound environmental policies. In the UK, the savings to business have been demonstrated in two pilot demonstration schemes, one of which (The Catalyst Project) looked at discharges to all environmental media. This scheme involved 14 companies on Merseyside and resulted in annual saving of £9 million; waste going to landfill was reduced by 12,000 tonnes per annum.^{[citation needed]}

There are a number of ways in which minimisation can be achieved; ideally each situation should be investigated on a case by case basis using standard auditing techniques as the first tool. This will indicate where waste is being produced and in what quantities. Some of the strategies include:

• Resource optimisation

Minimising the amount of waste an organisation or an individual produces goes hand in hand with optimising their use of raw materials. A simple example is that of a dressmaker carefully laying pattern pieces on a length of fabric to enable the garment to be cut out from the minimum quantity of fabric.

• Reuse of scrap material

The introduction of techniques or processes that enable production scrap to immediately be re-incorporated at the beginning of the manufacturing line so that it never reaches the stage of being considered a waste product. Many industries already routinely do this, such as paper mills where any damaged rolls are returned to the beginning of the production line; also, in the manufacture of plastic items where the off-cuts and scrap are re-incorporated into new products.

• Improved quality control and process monitoring

Taking steps to ensure that the number of reject batches is kept to a minimum; this can generally be achieved by increasing the frequency of inspection and the number of points of inspection. Installation of automated continuous monitoring equipment can help to identify production problems at an early stage.

• Waste exchanges

Where the waste product of one process becomes the raw material for a second process. These represent another way of reducing waste disposal volumes for those wastes which cannot be eliminated.

• Ship to point of use

Making deliveries of incoming raw materials or components direct to the point where they are assembled or used in the manufacturing process can alleviate the need for increased handling and protective wrappings or enclosures.

Waste reduction by improved design or durability

Product design

Waste minimisation and resource maximisation can most easily be addressed at the design stage in the case of manufactured products. In addition, reducing the number of different components used in a product, or making it easier to take apart, can make the task of recycling it at the end of its useful life simpler as well as making its repair possible.

There may be a need to decide whether reducing the amount of raw materials to make the goods is of paramount importance. It could be that reducing the volume or toxicity of waste created when the goods have reached the end of their life, or even making the products environmentally less harmful while in use, have higher priority. Waste minimisation approaches should not only consider reducing total volumes of waste, but also reducing the toxicity of waste streams, and the environmental impact as a result of their production and use (see later notes on life cycle analysis)

Manufacturing a product to meet its intended use

This is important in relation to the manufacture of products for "one off use" and applies most specifically to packaging materials. These should only be as durable as necessary to serve the needs of their intended purpose. However, it is wasteful to allow food, which has consumed resources and energy in its production, to be damaged or spoiled. Extreme measures designed to reduce packaging may have the effect of reducing the use of paper, metals, glass and plastics at the expense of the food they would have protected, despite the value of the wasted food being many times greater than the value of the now-avoided packaging.

Long life products

Product durability is a way of reducing waste and in the majority of cases—for example, extending a vacuum cleaner's useful life to fifteen years instead of twelve—can make a major contribution to resource optimisation.

There are however some instances where extending the life of an item could actually be a negative approach, in total environmental terms. The past decade has seen remarkable technological achievement with the widespread use of the microchip; these advances in technology are likely to continue with improvements in efficiency of a host of appliances and machinery. If we design an item with too much durability, then replacement with newer technology is likely to be delayed. For example, a washing machine produced 10 years ago, may use double the amount of water, detergent, and energy as one produced today.^{[citation needed]} Extending its useful life may, overall, place a heavier burden on the environment than sending the old one to be scrapped, its metal recycled, and purchasing a new model. Motor cars are another example: generally, old vehicles consume more fuel and produce more emissions than their modern counterparts.

In many respects, the way forward is to look at any manufactured product as not being waste at the end of its useful life for its intended purpose but rather as a resource for recycle and reuse. Recycling is aided by the use of fewer different materials in a single product; for example, the recent switch by car manufacturers to use only three or four types of plastic,^{[citation needed]} instead of more than twenty, has simplified the recovery of plastics from scrap cars. Sometimes a combination of paper and plastic, or plastic coating on glass, enables a product to fulfill its role with the minimum of resources, but, because of the mixed materials, it is harder to recycle than, say, an all-paper item.

There will always be some conflict between reducing to a minimum the resources used to make a product and the possibility of reusing, or recycling, the product. For example, in order to make a refillable glass bottle strong enough to withstand several trips between consumer and bottling plant, the bottle must be made stronger, which uses more glass. The heavier the container, the more transport needed to carry it and its contents to their destination. Transport has a large environmental impact. Therefore, there has to be careful evaluation of the number of return trips each bottle makes set against the increased resource used in making it refillable. If the refillable bottle is thrown away and not returned, or only refilled once or twice, the resources wasted are greater than if the bottle had been designed for a single use.

Many choices involve a trade-off, as far as environmental impact is concerned, and often we have insufficient information on which to base those choices.

Waste minimisation in households

Waste minimisation is hard to achieve for individuals and households, but there are some contributions which can be made. For example, care should be taken, when purchasing goods, that appropriate amounts and sizes are chosen. Buying large tins of paint to do a small decorating job, or buying larger amounts of food than can be consumed while fresh, are two examples of unnecessary waste creation.

Since waste is not simply the refuse put out for collection each week, considerable waste reduction in terms of resource use can be made by using electricity sparingly, by cutting down the number of car journeys made. Individuals can reduce the amount of waste they create by buying less, by buying longer-life products. Mending broken or worn items of clothing or equipment has a further important contribution to make.

In a domestic situation, the potential for minimisation is often dictated by life style: for example, if both parents in a household are working full time, necessitating the purchase of more convenience foods, or if there is a young baby in the family using disposable nappies.Home composting schemes, where householders themselves turn kitchen and garden wastes into compost can be loosely considered waste minimisation, but all other procedure, which require handling of wastes such as collection for recycling while reducing pressure on disposal facilities, are not actually reducing the amounts of waste generated.

We should not concentrate on reducing the amount of solid waste we produce to the exclusion of considerations about, among other things, wastage of energy or water. It is as wasteful to use several gallons of water unnecessarily, or to drive our cars when we could walk or cycle, or to consume energy thoughtlessly, as it is to discard newspapers, cans, or empty wrappings.Taking a very simplistic example, it can be very wasteful to drive several miles to deposit a few newspapers, empty cans, glass, or plastic bottles into collection banks. The resources consumed in doing so, together with the further resources needed to take the materials for reprocessing, could exceed the resources saved by them being thrown away. It is wasteful to demand new clothes and new furnishings simply to follow fashion trends when the current articles still have useful life left in them.

The amount of waste which we as individuals produce as a percentage of the total is small, even our best efforts in the above areas will have a minimum impact on overall waste volumes. Yet we as the public can help to influence policy in other areas. By being aware of the impacts of purchasing decisions, both industry and individuals can make a difference to total resource consumption.

As consumers, we have the right to choose which products we buy and, in making judgment on this, we should become more aware. We should take note of any eco-labeling—after much debate, it is still not mandatory—and maybe avoid products that don’t furnish us with this information. We should be influencing manufacturers and distributors by choosing products that minimise the use of packaging. Where reuse schemes are available we should use them. Maybe we should all discourage our daily dose of junk mail!

Conclusion

There are few instant solutions to reducing waste, but taking a wider view of what constitutes waste, and examining our actions as consumers, will help make best use of our resources.

See also

• Cleaner production
• Reuse
• Recycle
• Waste hierarchy
• Waste management

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