According to a recent report
of the World Bank, the world generated 2 billion tons municipal solid waste in
2016 and “unless urgent action is taken, it will increase 70 percent to 3.4
billion tons in 2050…and we will literally be living in waste if nothing is
done.”
This prediction seems a bit alarmist since governments in
high-income countries have effective programs to recycle waste or dispose of it
in environmentally safe ways. Low-and middle-income countries are creating more
and more of such programs as their economies and government revenues grow. In
addition, it is likely that new, efficient and low-cost techniques for the
disposal of wastes will be developed in the future.
Existing recycling efforts are very effective in high-income
countries where households create most of solid waste, sort it into four main types,
even though many consider this system to be inefficient
once the cost incurred by household in sorting, the cost of extra trucking
separate types of waste and the imperfect sorting by households are considered.
Food and other organics make up 44 percent by weight of the total.
Some of this waste is used to feed animals and produce compost for agriculture,
but most goes into landfills. The biggest problem facing the disposal of this
type of waste is the growing scarcity of landfill sites, which is caused by public
opposition based on concerns about the environment and by the rising cost of government
regulations.
The second-largest type of household waste at 17 percent is
paper and cardboard. Most of it is turned profitably into recycled products,
just as it has been before the government recycling programs were created. Crushed
glass (5%) is used to improve the quality of concrete and asphalt on roads. Metals
(4%), especially aluminum, are absorbed in the production of new metals. Wood
(2%) can be burned. Rubber (2%) and “other”
substances (14%) also are burned or go to landfills.
The third largest category of waste at 12 percent is plastics,
which receives the largest amount of public attention – the media regularly
display pictures of sites on land and of waterways filled with plastics and of
animals suffering from entanglement with containers and nets and even drinking
straws. Much media attention was recently given to the plastics covering large
areas of open oceans and the threat to marine life caused by their break-down
into micro-particles.
One reason for this public and government attention to
plastics is that their disposal is very difficult and costly. Thus, because of
the particular molecular structure of some types of plastics, in 2016 only
eight percent of the annual 32 million tons of it in the United States was
recycled and turned into new commercial products. The remaining 90 percent was
incinerated, creating commercially valuable energy but also polluting the air,
was buried in landfills where it can take up to 10,000 years to decompose or
simply remained uncollected creating health hazards for humans and endangering
wildlife on land and in the oceans. This problem is especially serious in low-
and middle-income countries of the world where most plastic waste is
uncollected. Plastics are also the target of many regulations to reduce
their use by consumers such as the contentious ban on plastic shopping bags and
drinking straws.
The good news is that a new technology has been developed for
the productive re-use of plastic waste. Information about it can be found at
the company website BYFUSION, which claims
that it “Turns plastic trash into profit by taking any type of unsorted and
unwashed plastic waste into an advanced building material”. (Disclaimer: I have
no relationship with this company).
The new technology shreds unwashed and unsorted plastic
products, super-heats these shreds with water until they are ready to be
compressed into blocks that remain solid without the use of adhesives or other
chemicals. These blocks are extremely durable, offer very good insulation from
temperature and sound and do not emit harmful fumes. They can be used in many
types of construction but are likely to be particularly useful in building
low-cost homes in developing countries. Holes can be drilled into the blocks to
allow the insertion of stabilizing rods, pipes and wires. For appearance and
comfort, they can readily be covered with drywall, wood or stucco.
The machines needed to convert plastic trash into useful
bricks are simple in design and can be operated by few, mostly low-skilled
workers. They fit onto flat-bed trucks and can be driven to location where
plastic waste has accumulated.
The machinery used to produce the bricks can be purchased
and operated by government agencies or by private entrepreneurs, who can obtain
the plastic inputs they need from municipal collection stations at low or zero
cost, possibly even being paid for doing a job the stations no longer need to
do. These operators can sell the plastic bricks at prices competitive with
those made from clay or concrete.
The biggest potential benefits of producing plastic bricks
from waste is in low- and middle-income countries where almost all plastic
waste ends up in open dumps. The owners of the machines can buy the plastics
from scavengers now working these dumps or who collect it from the environment.
There is a growing market for low-priced bricks for construction of simple,
low-cost homes in these countries.
Governmental aid-giving or private non-profit organizations might
consider subsidizing the owners of the machines turning waste into useful
products, reduce environmental pollution, encourage economic development and
prevent the world from “living in waste.”
Herbert
Grubel
Emeritus
Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University
Senior
Fellow, The Fraser Institute
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