HOW I MANAGED TO REDUCE WASTE BY HALF

 Brussels, Economics, Environment, Europe english  No Responses »
Apr 212010
 

Less than a year ago I participated in the 2h training course organised by Bruxelles-Environement in home vermi-composting and it really worked. Looking back to the time when I started to do home-compost, August 2009, I can confirm that the white bag (residual waste for Brussels) has been reduced by more than 50%.
The waste we produce is now so little that we only have to take it out once every two or three weeks!
If you live in an apartment and never heard about vermi-composting you probably think that keeping the garbage at home for 2 weeks must stink as hell… the truth is that it doesn’t because most of the things that stink are biodegradable and hence the worms will eat them without generating odours.

Doing vermi-composting is not difficult but it does require some time and commitment. However, it really pays off in understanding how and what we eat, the cycles of nature –even when living in the city- and in knowing that we are throwing away less stuff which would end up in the incinerator and hence emitting more CO2. Also the by-products of vermi-composting are soil fertilizer and compost which are better than commercial fertilizers and I use for my plants.
The only problem I have is that I produce a bit too much compost for my needs but this is easy to fix by just giving it to your neighbour.

One thing that surprised me is how much water and carbon is in our food; i.e. the worms turn 1kg of food waste into less than 50gr of compost and a bit of fertilizer. When I first harvested the compost it was 6 months after I started and I collected around less than 2kg of compost. Amazing…

If we look at the big picture we can see that in this last year in which I reduced my waste generation in more than 50% without much effort, the European Union continues to deliberate if compost is good or bad, better or worst than incineration, etc and still –after more than 10 years since it first considered it- doesn’t see the point in producing a Biowaste Directive. In the meantime gigatons of waste have been landfilled and incinerated and climate change goes on… it is a good indicator of who does the European Commission listen to when drafting legislation. One more example of how the EU rhetoric is contradicted by its actions: The sad “Do as I say (not as I do)” approach that we are used to.

At a local level, I could have waited for the city of Brussels to start a program of separate collection of organic waste so I wouldn’t need to organize the vermin-composting at home but knowing that the city is obliged to feed the incinerator for the next decades I know too well that this won’t happen.

Conclusion, if you care about climate change, environment and all these sort of things the best is if you start fixing it yourself with small things; by the time the EU or the city gets it right we might be under water.

 Posted by admin at 17:14  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Rewarded to destroy wealth? Recycling has higher social return than banking

 Economics, Environment  No Responses »
Dec 162009
 

Photo: Dave Ciplet

There are lots of new approaches about how economics should be reformed in order to allow prices to tell the truth, internalising future or environmental costs, integrating scarcity in the equation, new indicators of wealth, etc.  All these topics which might have looked revolutionary or idealist not too long ago are not provocative anymore for many.

However I run into a report about a new approach in looking at the value of work which struck me. A study by NEF in which they look at how much the different professions are paid in comparison to how much they contribute to society it concludes that whereas waste recycling workers they generate 12 pounds for every pound they are paid, bankers destroy 11 pounds worth of value for every pound in value they generate. Yet in our economic system those who destroy wealth are rewarded with huge salaries and those who create it receive minimum wages.

I love it when common sense competes with economics even though the former always loses…

Worth a read:

Waste recycling workers do a range of different jobs that relate to processing and preventing waste and promoting recycling. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced when goods are recycled instead of sending them to incineration or landfill. There is also a value in reusing goods, and we have included this in our model. Our model projects that for every £1 of value spent on wages, £12 of value will be generated.
High-earning investment bankers in the City of London are among the best remunerated people in the economy. But the earnings they command and the profits they make come at a huge cost because of the damaging social effects of the City of London’s financial activities. We found that rather than being ‘wealth creators’, these City bankers are being handsomely rewarded for bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse. While collecting salaries of between £500,000 and £10 million, leading City bankers to destroy £7 of social value for every pound in value they generate.
Although the role of an advertising executive has high status, the impact of the industry has always been a point of controversy. It encourages high consumer spending and indebtedness. It can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress. In our economic model we estimate the share of social and environmental damage caused by overconsumption that is attributable to advertising. For a salary of between £50,000 and £12 million, top advertising executives destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate.

Waste recycling workers do a range of different jobs that relate to processing and preventing waste and promoting recycling. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced when goods are recycled instead of sending them to incineration or landfill. There is also a value in reusing goods, and we have included this in our model. Our model projects that for every £1 of value spent on wages, £12 of value will be generated.


High-earning investment bankers in the City of London are among the best remunerated people in the economy. But the earnings they command and the profits they make come at a huge cost because of the damaging social effects of the City of London’s financial activities. We found that rather than being ‘wealth creators’, these City bankers are being handsomely rewarded for bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse. While collecting salaries of between £500,000 and £10 million, leading City bankers to destroy £7 of social value for every pound in value they generate.


Although the role of an advertising executive has high status, the impact of the industry has always been a point of controversy. It encourages high consumer spending and indebtedness. It can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress. In our economic model we estimate the share of social and environmental damage caused by overconsumption that is attributable to advertising. For a salary of between £50,000 and £12 million, top advertising executives destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate.

 Posted by admin at 1:00  Tagged with: , , , , ,

ECONOMY – ECOLOGY = 0

 Economics, Environment  No Responses »
Nov 262009
 

Filipines - ManilaJust came back from the Philippines and I could see with my own eyes a very clear example of how the environment is the basis of the economy.

Manila suffered severe floods a month ago: 4 typhoons visited the archipelago and almost all the city (20million hab) was flooded.  Water and mud reached three-stories high. This might sound like the typical climate change story (and it partly is): unusual intense rains blocked the sewers, not used to such big flows. However, the fact is that when being there I could see how the high intensity of torrential waters was only responsible for 50% of the damage; the truth is that sewers were blocked by the huge amounts of waste, mainly plastic bags, dumped in the streams across the city. If the damage that these plastic bags caused had been included in their prices they would have been so expensive that they had not been able to be sold. The price of the plastic bags only reflected part of the cost of production but in no way its environmental cost.

On the top of that, the mud that covered the city was dragged by the waters from the hills surrounding the city. This had not happened in the past because the forests were keeping the soils in place (40 years ago similar storms struck Manila but the mud stayed in the hills) . During the last 20 years all these trees have been cut to build residential complexes and gulf fields. It is now clear that those trees, because of its function, had a lot higher value than what economists and developers thought and what prices reflected. And the top of the paradox is that those paying most of the price of removing the trees are now the poor people living downtown who have seen their households covered with mud. Those who live in the hills only paid a marginal cost for cutting the trees.

All in all; man-made climate change, man-produced plastic bags and forests cut by men are all three the living demonstration of bad economics. The prices didn’t tell the truth; most of the costs (that should have been included in the price) were to be paid after the products were sold and the profit was made by some whilst costs had to be shouldered by many.

Economic theory is useful to nurture philosophical discussions and make one’s ego feel good but seeing with my eyes the effects of getting things wrong (and it’s been 200 years of bad economics) is as humbling as it is infuriating. Being “green” is not a trend, not even a matter of political choice; it is about understanding that the real meaning of economics is the efficient management of today’s and future’s resources in a world of scarcity.

 Posted by admin at 14:04  Tagged with: , , , , , ,
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