Waste Prevention Policy and Behaviour

New Approaches to Reducing Waste Generation and its Environmental Impacts

Ana Paula Bortoleto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138225992
• eBook ISBN: 9781317815204
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

As prosperity levels rise, so too does the number of products and services being consumed. For policy makers in waste management facing a growing challenge, it is vital to understand the complex relationship between waste prevention policies and individual behaviour regarding waste generation. This book examines that interplay, taking a close look at the role of motivation, difficulties, values and constraints.

The first part of the book explores the theoretical framework, policy, barriers and facilitators for waste prevention behaviour. The second part presents in-depth case studies from three cities (Sao Paulo, Sheffield and Tokyo) examining the contextual factors, behavioural variations among them and the role of motivation and constraints in their populations. The book provides a detailed picture of how waste prevention policies enter the private, domestic sphere, offering insights for generating behavioural change at the household level and thus moving larger communities towards sustainable waste management.

The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental policy, management, sociology, psychology, geography, technology and waste studies.

1 An introduction to the book

This book is for those readers with some interest in trash or rubbish or, more politely, waste and are concerned about contemporary threats to environmental and social well-being posed by the way humans deal with waste. Some brief observations are enough to show that waste management impacts the environment on every level, from local to global. Human population growth and human activities are rapidly increasing waste generation both in developed and developing nations. Recent quantitative assessments of waste production in urban areas give a sobering picture: in a new report on municipal solid waste, the World Bank (Hoornweg & Bhada-Tata 2012) found that the world’s cities currently generate around 1.3 billion tonnes of waste a year, or 1.2 kg per city-dweller per day, nearly half of which comes from OECD countries. That is predicted to rise to 2.2 billion tonnes by 2025, or 1.4 kg per person per day. The Bank estimates China’s urbanites will throw away 1.4 billion tonnes in 2025, up from 520 million tonnes today. By contrast, America’s urban rubbish pile will increase from 620 million tonnes to 700 million tonnes. Many people hope that technology will solve this problem, but the reality is that while looking for technology efficiency and other innovations might feel more comfortable, it is unlikely they can offer a sustainable solution. While technology will certainly be needed to reverse environmental impacts, just as the technological revolution was needed to produce it, the impacts that threaten our society and environment are too enormous and complex to be solved by technological innovation alone. Although human beings have always produced waste (and will continue to do so), the pace and scale of the current waste production knows no precedent. To sum up, betting on the smaller odds of technology efficiency, the worse the problems become, the more difficult it will be to find a real solution. More importantly, confining waste-management research to engineering and natural sciences misses the primary cause of the current rise of waste generation: human behaviour. It is critical to examine the sociological and psychological dimensions of this problem, because waste problems are deeply related to consumption and, therefore, are caused by human behaviour relating to our beliefs, values, social interactions and the context of where we are living. It is human behaviour that determines how efficient a waste prevention programme will be. Waste problems are literally threatening people’s lives not only in developing countries but also in developed countries. The incidence of homelessness is everywhere, perhaps more than at any time in human history. This is an acute issue which has created a survivalist informal economy based on the collection and selling of recyclable wastes, i.e. the waste from our throwaway society. Yet, most people proceed as though their normal lives will continue, and the threat coexists peacefully with the vague sense of pessimism about the future. Thus, solutions for waste generation will have to start through waste prevention, and that will require more than technological answers. We will have to change our way of life, the ways we behave, how we see ourselves, how we experience our relationship with nature, and even, how we understand consumption.

I was driven to write this book not only by the challenge of waste issues, which links all of us, but also by the perspective that engineering alone will not be successful in solving them regardless of all the effort. Despite being recognised as a sustainable approach to waste management, waste prevention is still not effective in addressing waste generation issues. Studies suggest that waste is a dynamic system where materials move in and out in many different ways apart from kerbside collections. Waste prevention occurs before a product is recognised as waste. If we focus on how waste is produced, our attention will be drawn away from the waste bin and concentrated on human behaviour. Waste is created through the recognition of value, i.e. everything that comes to the end of its life will require a decision. As our everyday life has rapidly changed throughout the last decades, so has this process of defining what waste is. Essentially, we can choose to reduce our waste by not buying certain products, by reusing what we have bought or by participating in recycling programmes. However, by far, our most favoured option is still to throw our waste into a dustbin (or plastic bags). As the major direct and indirect producers of waste, we, as householders, have the power to decide whether to participate in waste prevention programmes on a regular basis. And that is the main challenge of waste prevention programmes: how to stimulate householders to buy less, reuse as much as they can and only throw away what can be recycled, composted or incinerated to produce energy. Behaviour change is the cornerstone of waste prevention. And to promote this change, waste prevention research needs to be interdisciplinary. There are many other disciplines (e.g. psychology, sociology) that are relevant to waste issues and should be considered when designing waste prevention policies. Interdisciplinary research is still at best midway into effectively putting its resources at the disposal of decision makers working for a more sustainable waste-management policy. It is necessary and imperative to see a sea change in the work of ‘waste researchers’ towards addressing human behaviour, waste generation and consumption. Although this is a significant challenge, this is the kind of wake-up call I hope this book will provoke and inspire others.

Waste management and sustainable development

Our society is overloaded with challenges to mitigate global and local environmental impacts through sustainable development. In 1987, the Brundtland Commission (WCED 1987) defined sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. This ambitious statement integrates environmental, social and economic goals that need to be reached for its practical implementation. Donella H. Meadows (Meadows et al. 2004) wrote: ‘sustainability is a new idea to many people, and many find it hard to understand. But all over the world there are people who have entered into the exercise of imagining and bringing into being a sustainable world. They see it as a world to move toward not reluctantly, but joyfully, not with a sense of sacrifice, but a sense of adventure. A sustainable world could be very much better than the one we live in today’. The major challenge for researchers and policy makers today is the social facet of sustainability. It is increasingly recognised that environmental problems stem from the millions of choices that people make in everyday life. Until the majority of people change their attitudes and behaviour towards nature conservation, the search for a sustainable future for the planet will elude us. The implementation of any environmental policy needs ordinary people’s active involvement and, as a result, it poses significant difficulties for policy makers. The prospect of using social understanding of environmental issues is one that has the potential to achieve sustainable development.

At the present time, humanity is involved in an unparalleled situation: we are turning ourselves into an urban species. Large cities, not villages and towns, are becoming our main habitat, and where the future of the biosphere will be determined. It is crucial to understand that our urban areas need to be socially just, participatory and economically viable while being environmentally sustainable. Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992), the main product of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, states that dialogue about local sustainability policies must be undertaken with all citizens. The majority of the world’s local authorities have initiated Agenda 21 programmes, but while many useful things have been said, very little has been done to implement them. Generating interest and action from individuals (i.e. increasing intrinsic motivation) is probably the most important and difficult aspect of sustainable development on the ground. Sustainable development at the local level must be implemented in a way which inspires people and which gives them a sense of ownership and direct involvement.

Urban areas take up 2 per cent of the Earth’s surface, with 53 per cent of the world’s population using 75 per cent of all natural resources and discharging similar amounts of waste (Girardet 1999). Much effort has gone into addressing the problems of scarcity, crime and the accumulation of social discontent. However, an issue which has received less thought is the large use of resources by urban areas and the resulting urban wastes. Chapter 17 of Agenda 21 sets out waste as a key problem in the search for sustainable development. In most metropolitan cities, there has been a substantial increase in waste produced per capita. There is confirmed evidence of absolute growth in material requirements, products used, and ultimate waste generation throughout the OECD area and beyond (OECD 2011). Further, waste composition has become even more complex and hazardous. Household waste is, traditionally, one of the hardest sources of waste to manage effectively. However, now, its composition has become more diverse in terms of raw materials and contamination and, increasingly more difficult to segregate and to recycle.

Environmental concerns over the management and disposal of waste can be divided into two major areas: conservation of resources and pollution of the environment. The consequences of these environmental impacts can be easily understood by using systems’ theory. This theory assumes that everything exists as part of a larger system, in other words, that everything is connected. Accordingly, any urban area is a subsystem of the Nature’s ecosystem and for that reason these subsystems need to work inside the limits of their parent system. Nature’s own ecosystems have an essentially circular metabolism in which every output discharged by an organism also becomes an input to sustain the continuity of the whole living environment. On the other hand, the metabolism of most urban areas is essentially linear, with resources being injected through the urban system without much concern about their origin or about the destination of wastes, resulting in the discharge of vast amounts of waste products incompatible with natural systems. Inputs and outputs are largely unconnected. This linear model is unsustainable and undermines the overall ecological viability of urban systems, for it has the tendency to disrupt natural cycles. Waste is the most visible output by cities that keeps growing against the limits of cities’ capacity to manage it in a sustainable way. A sustainable waste-management system must be environmentally effective, economically affordable and socially acceptable. Taking waste to landfill outside the cities is a misuse of both space and resources that could be used more beneficially. Many cities in developing and developed nations have chosen incineration as the most convenient solution for their waste-management systems. It reduces the volume of waste and energy recovery can be added as bonus. But incineration is far away from being the solution for urban waste problems. Incinerators compare badly with recycling in terms of energy conservation. Recycling is three to six times more energy efficient than incineration (Young et al. 1994). Some European cities are now investing in a combination of recycling and composting facilities with minimal incineration for waste products that cannot be further recycled.Nevertheless, not all waste materials can be recycled and, in general, it is unlikely that recycling alone will be able to contend with the ever-mounting waste challenge. As a consequence, concerns over conservation of resources have led to calls for, first, general reductions in the amount of waste generated (i.e. waste prevention), and second, for ways to recover the materials or energy from the waste, so they can be reused.

Waste prevention

Waste prevention has been regarded by policy makers and environmental agencies as the sustainable option to decrease the impact of waste generation. However, waste prevention is not only the result of administrative activities but also from the millions of choices that people make in daily life. Consequently, policy makers are now dealing with more and more complex ways to implement waste prevention. This has led progressively to a greater focus on the contribution that waste prevention can make to mitigate waste generation and, so, the costs and impacts from landfill sites, incineration plants and kerbside collection. During the early 1990s, many environmental agencies fully embraced ‘source reduction’ and ‘pollution prevention’ as overarching goals after realising the limits of downstream and end-of-pipe approaches. This meant, among other things, that as little waste as possible was to be finally disposed of, and this objective was to be achieved with priority focus on preventive efforts, generally followed by recycling and incineration. Based on these premises, waste prevention has been accepted as an essential waste-management policy for nearly five years in developed countries and, more recently, in developing countries (e.g. Brazil).

While it is true that the principle of waste prevention is universally accepted, the practice has a considerable distance to travel in achieving its full potential. Despite the groundswell of municipal governments and environmental agencies in tackling waste prevention policies, the amounts of waste being produced continue to rise across the globe. Neither the community nor the national targets set in the past have been satisfactorily met and many initiatives have been faced with considerable difficulties in maintaining individuals’ engagement. The quantity of waste generated in the OECD area has risen strongly since 1980, and exceeded an estimated 650 million tonnes in 2009 (540 kg per capita) (OECD 2011). In most countries for which data are available, increased affluence, associated with economic growth, and changes in consumption patterns tend to generate higher rates of waste per capita. That is why waste prevention entails modified consumption patterns and modified production with concomitant reduction of waste generation in the upstream portions of the product lifecycle.The definition of waste prevention by the OECD (2000) emphasises this complexity, by highlighting that: (i) waste prevention is a multi-faceted construct, and is far from being a single homogeneous behaviour; (ii) individual preferences and choices can guide many different manifestations of waste prevention behaviour; (iii) waste prevention should be a collective and universal responsibility; and, (iv) the value of individual waste prevention actions can be judgemental and vary according to perspective.

Given its multi-faceted nature, waste prevention is often poorly understood by policy makers. Still, it is not clear to them how to promote relevant awareness and behavioural change of individuals’ waste prevention behaviour. This can be attributed to several causes, but mainly because of the lack of comprehension of the psychological mechanisms which influence intrinsic motivation to engage in waste prevention behaviour. Individuals’ decisions on waste prevention actions are often made under substantive uncertainty. They do not have all necessary information to fully comprehend the effects of their actions. Because of that, understanding how waste prevention behaviour occurs and how this affects individuals’ engagement have become necessary in recent years.

Although people’s behaviour has a huge impact on the environment and on the efficiency of waste-management systems, little research attention has been paid to this crucial issue. This book is about understanding the interface between waste prevention policies and individuals’ behaviour. It aims to show the way people conceptualise waste problems by looking at the consequences of these perceptions for making decisions on waste prevention behaviour.

Priorities for waste prevention research

As it is evident that there has been a profound change in urban areas, city dwellers have also changed, with technologies now merged into our daily life and the experience of nature has become ever more distant. And this new urban society has a crucial role in waste prevention policies. In 2000, the OECD (2000) established a consensus understanding of waste prevention: ‘waste prevention refers to three types of practical actions: strict avoidance, reduction at source, and product reuse. All societal actors including product manufacturers, businesses and institutions, and individuals and communities may express specific waste prevention behaviours. The practical value of waste prevention will be circumstance-specific and will depend on the characteristics of the material, product, waste stream or target audience in question’. Following this definition, the implementation of waste prevention policies requires ordinary people’s active involvement.

Householders can make a number of decisions regarding what to do with the materials they have already purchased and even whether to purchase them. Essentially, they can choose to reduce their waste, reuse what they bought and participate in recycling schemes. However, the most favoured option is still to dispose of the rubbish produced into black plastic bags. For this reason, the challenge for waste prevention policies is how to intrinsically motivate the ordinary people to buy less, reuse as much of their consumed products as they can and only throw away what can be recycled, composted or incinerated to produce energy. They need to engage in these actions on a regular basis or a decrease in waste generation or even waste stabilisation will be difficult to achieve. In essence, a fundamental shift in individuals’ behaviour is required if the targets of sustainable development are to be accomplished.

Although householders have a vital role to play in achieving sustainable waste management, the research for a ‘social solution’ has been the effort of relatively few academics and research institutions. One of the main arguments is that the relationship between awareness campaigns and actual behavioural change is complex and most of time weak and many different factors can interfere preventing a long-term effect in terms of waste reduction. In that case, the role of technol...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 An introduction to the book
• Part I Waste prevention policies: an overview
• Part II Waste prevention behaviour: conceptual issues
• Part III Waste prevention behaviour: case studies
• Part IV Conclusion
• Index