Infrastructure or disruption

There is an argument that waste management is about providing infrastructure that services economies.

Under this model, it is the responsibility of government to provide a core service that gets rid of waste as quickly and efficiently as possible. Cheaply too. There is an emphasis on planning, on making sure that you never get into a situation where you can't get rid of the rubbish.

The outcome of this sort of top down approach is that waste tends to get treated in aggregate, and the least bad outcome pursued. The approach tends to reinforce the position of established players, and reduce the chances for innovation. It is safe mediocrity.

An alternative is to see waste management as having ample scope for disruption. That waste is no different to any other industry in a free market, and that is, established players are on a permanent slide to being consumed by nimbler businesses around them.

If you see the potential for disruption, then planning is the last thing you will want to do. Not only are plans impossible, but creating the plan removes the ingredients for disruption. Disruption requires bottom up action, people and businesses recognising and acting on opportunities close to the ground rather than from the stratosphere of spreadsheets built on dodgy assumptions. Planning tends to create solutions that prohibit bottom up solutions.

It would be fair to say that I have a strong bias toward bottom up solutions. This seems more entrepreneurial, more innovative, efficient, alive. It seems to me to create the necessary preconditions for excellence. Nevertheless, there remains a role for base level infrastructure.

There needs to be somebody providing a safety net solution that prevents disease, but a net that can be built upon. I think that is what landfills are all about. They are imperfect but sufficient. They do not suffer greatly from waste being taken out and recycled, and indeed their existence is so repugnant that you feel obliged to do something. They do not demand large volumes to be viable. In fact, the existence of landfills might even be a necessary precondition for disruption in the waste industry.

Landfill, complete with compactor and seagulls. From Zerowaste SA.

And so, like so many things, you have to conclude that it is not a matter of either-or, but both-and.

That is not to defend landfills (though I've run many). It is simply to acknowledge them as an imperfect part of an imperfect world. A part we should not rest within but rather build upon.