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| Robert Barthelmes – Goldenrod (2006) |
The term sustainability refers to things that keep going sustaining themselves and continue forever. In a perfect sustainable earth, humans could have access to clean air and water, food, and other resources needed to have a high quality life, allowing this same conditions for future generations. What is happening in reality is that we are abusing the resources, without considering the consequences of our product choices to the planet. There is an interesting website where you can "measure" your footprint in the planet. It also tells you how many earths would be needed if everyone in the planet would share your lifestyle (for me it was 4 earths, which is really shocking).Sustainability is mandatory to ensure the future of the planet and the human beings. And this requires a better use of the resources, and a minimization of the waste, in fact, there shouldn't be a waste; rather the waste from the production of one product should be used as resource for the next, and so on. The so called "cradle to cradle" concept, instead of "cradle to grave".
The problem
There are many scary facts about waste, some of them we don't even realize. I will focus on US data because that is where we are living, but many places are not far from these numbers:
- Americans generate 760 kg of waste per person per year, about 2 kg per day
- 10% of rich countries’ greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.
- Nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.
- Every year nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.
- Average worldwide annual paper consumption is 48 kg per person, average per capita paper use in the USA is 333 KG. Approx. 324 L. of water is used to produce 1 kg of paper
- Americans discarded about 2,900,000 tons of aluminum in 2012. The largest source of aluminum in the MSW stream is used beverage containers and other packaging containers.
- Americans consume over 80,000,000,000 aluminum cans every year.
- Each year American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam cups. Even 500 years from now, a foam coffee cup will be sitting in a landfill.
- Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour, most of which are tossed away.
- Americans throw away about 28,000,000,000 bottles and jars every year.
- Americans also discharge 220,000,000 car tires every year
- It is estimated that Americans waste 2,000,000 gallons of fuel each year due to under-inflated tires
- About 200 million gallons of used motor oil is illegally dumped in the US each year. A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
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| Municipal solid waste (MSW) production, kg per person per day, World Bank 2012. |
But the way we produce waste is not justified only because of high consumption of goods (which sometimes we can't avoid); another important reason for waste is the design of the product over its lifetime. There are many products that have been designed for the "first life", and have to be disposed after that, as waste. If, in the contrary, the product had been designed up to the end, all components that form a product would be reused for a different purpose.
The solution
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The first and most important thing to do is a reduction of the products we consume. In our everyday lives we often don't realize that we can avoid using certain products. The best example, because it is also the biggest waste, is the food. We need to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away. Another example is the amount of canned beverages, there is an interesting article that shows the effect that we could have if we have one less can per week, starting small can also have huge effects!
Reusing products is also a great way of enlarging their lifetime. Talking to friends and neighbors, you can find out that somebody wants to get rid of a good you'd like to acquire. The perfect example is books and school material, because once you've used them, they are still good for other people. Another example, if you know that somebody is having a party, you can let them know that you have stuff from a previous party they can borrow.
The third step in the hierarchy is recycling. This one has a lot of potential, because we can virtually recycle 100% of paper, aluminum cans, some plastics, etc. The fact that we are still not doing it tells us that we need to change our mindsets, but also that some changes in the infrastructure is needed to facilitate the recycling task. A trendy way to recycle is to reuse the trash located nearby to make new objects, like the instruments in the picture. If you are interested to know the cycle of recycle, follow this link, it explains how materials like paper, plastics, metals, and glass are recycled. Energy recovery from the waste is the fourth step in the chain. According to the EPA, energy recovery from waste is the conversion of non-recyclable waste materials into usable heat, electricity, or fuel through a variety of processes, including combustion, gasification, pyrolization, anaerobic digestion, and landfill gas (LFG) recovery. Municipal solid waste landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States, accounting for approximately 18.2 percent of these emissions in 2012. Instead of escaping into the air, LFG can be captured, converted, and used as used to generate electricity, replace fossil fuels in industrial and manufacturing operations, or upgraded to pipeline–quality gas where the gas may be used directly or processed into an alternative vehicle fuel.
The last step and least favored option is the disposal of products and goods in landfills. This is where the waste should go when there is no possible use of it nor its energy, and has to be stored in a safe way to avoid contamination of the surrounding landscape. Some of the goods, however, are banned for disposal in these facilities, such as paints, cleaners/chemicals, motor oil, batteries, and pesticides. Some communities account for safe drop off sites for these products, but there is still many regions which don't account for it. Sincerely speaking, the only thing you can do as of now is to reduce the usage of these products as much as possible.
Conclusion
The world's development has focused on fast, growing production, to satisfy the current needs and even ensure an increasing demand. On the way, we forgot to minimize our footprint in order to live in a sustainable way. Some people say that the concept of "sustainable development" is not possible, because all development tries to rise the demand, and will not be neutral to the earth and its resources. While I am not sure of that, I can say that we didn't even try really hard, and there is a lot to do in this aspect.
There is lots of information regarding these issues in the Internet, so I am not going to give you a list, I just wanted to share a general overview, hopefully you found something interesting in it.
Thanks for reading,
Lita & Andres
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P.S.You can find the sources used in this entry here:
- http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/
- http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTURBANDEVELOPMENT/Resources/336387-1334852610766/Chap3.pdf
- International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Discussion Paper (IIED, London, September 1996)
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997
- http://www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-facts.html
- http://resourcefulschools.org/facts/
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