The opportunity for specialty metals

I've been giving quite a bit of thought to what the Future of Waste might look like.

Right now, I am fixated by the prospect of an intimately connected world. Not just connected, but also transparent, and all of that information broadly available so that reprocessors can connect waste generators with manufacturers.

This might seem a little esoteric, but it can be brought home in the context of specialty metals.

But before we get to specialty metals, consider metals in general. Their recycling is generally pretty poor. The figure below is from a great paper in Science magazine called Challenges in Metal Recycling (subscription required). If you don't want to pay for a subscription, much of the information in the article is in a UNEP report "Recycling rates of metals" (including a version of the figure below)

Recycling rates of metals, source Science

The article makes the point that, whilst metals are theoretically infinitely recyclable, actual recycling often falls far short.

Returning to specialty metals, part of the problem is straight out thermodynamics. You can't get around the laws of thermodynamics around extracting some metals from alloys.

But the real story is not really about thermodynamics. We are a long way away from butting against limits on recycling imposed by immutable laws. Instead, our limits are far more prosaic.

The report distills the challenge down to three opportunities:

1. Improved segregation and collection
2. Improved recycling technology
3. Improved design for readily separation and dismantling

An example is made of an aerospace superalloy that is both valuable and confined within a relatively small industry (making for straightforward logistics). In this context, 90% of the superalloys are collected.

Imagine if reprocessors put their efforts into the first two opportunities, and worked with designers and manufacturers to sort out the third.

Improved segregation and collection

Imagine a network that "knows" where materials are when they have reached the end of their life and scampers out to collect the materials before they are smashed up, mixed up, otherwise made uneconomic to recycle.

It's like a Geographic Information Sytem, but containing details of any number of components and their location. The Internet of Things, but drilled down to a very fine level. With the liberal use of sensors and some really clever programming in behind it, you could overcome the tricky logistics of diffuse materials.

Not down to each alloy of course, but aggregated up to a level where variation is insignificant. So maybe each definable component (say, down to a mobile phone, or a particular superalloyed component). That must be possible. In fact, it's probably already being done (or close to being done) for the aerospace industry to monitor components for their fatigue.

Knowing where components are, you can then look at their targeted dismantling to separate out particular metals, making their final processing simpler. The report cites studies which have found that targeted dismantling has the potential to "increase gold recovery from the current 26% to some 43%, tantalum up to 48%, and gallium up to 30%".

Improved recycling technology

The opportunity for technology innovation in this space is awesome. You can imagine that the mining industry could play an immense role here, modifying the technologies they've deployed to extract metals from trace concentrations in ore.

Rare earth magnets at Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd.'s Matsudo research laboratory, Japan. Source: Bloomberg

To quote from the article:

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that we manufacture modern products with the best possible technologies we can devise, but generally recycle them with relatively basic approaches. This situation has evolved from a lack of incentives in many directions—little to no support for implementation of new recycling technologies, the unfavorable image of the scrap yard, the frequent specification of virgin material by manufacturers, and sheer lack of knowledge as to the elemental composition of modern products. It is true that recycling is often limited by unfavorable economics, but it is equally true that those economics reflect a lack of attention to design for recycling and a reluctance to invest in the improved separation and sorting equipment that has emerged within the past decade. It is time that corporations, universities, and governments work together to transform the state of today’s metal recycling by demonstrating the need for continuing research on improved technologies, the potential benefits of deployment of the improved technologies now available, and the promise suggested by regulatory and financial initiatives that speak to these challenges.

There is little more to add. The development of technology is surely something that the developed world gets. The transition of research from lab to pilot to full scale technology is not an unknown. The shortages of specialty metals are also no secret. 

This will happen when the right team is assembled, supported by the right venture capital, and underpinned by strong collection systems.

Improved design for readily separation and dismantling

The final point where improved recovery of specialty metals will occur is in the design of items using the metals. That might involve substituting one metal for another, making components easier to take apart, or even designing components so that they automatically come apart when exposed to a particular environment.

All of this can be done. The limiting factor is information and interest.

It has been argued that having mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fixes this, as it makes the electronics manufacturer interested in the eventual e-waste problem. I'm not so convinced, as even under an EPR scheme, the management of waste is very quickly divorced from the design of new materials. Done right, it is useful as a motivator to improve collection. Done badly, tonnage targets can ruin the rare metals in favour of recovering the heavy components.

I think that, setting aside EPR, there is scope of a clever intermediary to exploit the information gap, to maintain a flow of information back and forth between the designer and the recycler. This, I think, the article suggests:

Ideally, an information feedback loop to materials scientists and designers would emphasize the consequences of complex designs on the recyclability of products, leading, for example, to a redesign of alloys to accommodate more scrap

So there is an opportunity in the recovery of specialty metals. I would suggest it is a very substantial opportunity. I'd also suggest that it matters little where the high-tech end of this is done, because the mass is relatively small and thus the transport component of the total cost not great.

You could imagine Perth (or Darwin) dedicating itself to becoming a rare earth recovery hotspot, having labour intensive disassembly in South-East Asia (in a properly controlled environment), and the extracted components shipped (flown!) here for final recovery.

You could imagine a firm developing and rolling out sensors, offering to pay for materials once they reach the end of their life as determined by the sensor. The added benefit is that you get scheduled maintenance and replacement of components.

You could also imagine all of this happening within the same firm, and that firm developing incredible expertise in the design of high tech equipment for recycling.

It is an immense opportunity, an opportunity for the 21st century. It is an opportunity that is already being developed in Japan. 

Does anybody else want to play?

Time for waste to take centre stage

Guest post by Alex Serpo, editor of Inside Waste Magazine and associated website, BEN Waste.

For god knows how long, the waste industry has sought to brand itself beyond a disposal or cleanup service. This process has seen limited success, but it is critical to industry growth and a viable planet.

The reality is, public perception of an industry matters. Industries in the front of the public's imagination (not mind!) attract smart graduates and investment. Those we forget about tend to suffer.

As I perceive it, the waste industry is suffering from a famine of public enthusiasm, but we'll never get there unless we firmly believe there is a road from famine to feast. 

While acknowledging the road may be long and arduous, as a communications professional I thought I'd throw in my two cents about how the industry could help promote the value of the services it provides to the public at large.

Given the huge wave of commentary around environmental issues today, I believe the waste industry is in a unique position to place itself at the centre of the sustainability movement.

Where are we today?

Broadly, the public associates waste management with kerbside collection, blissfully unaware of the waste impacts that come from the commercial, industrial, construction and, increasingly, mining sectors.

People are also deeply concerned about environmental degradation, but wary of action on international issues like climate change due to scale and complexity. They also don't like taxing resource-intensive consumption - they think it's the fun police.

No, the sustainability revolution - or better, evolution - must happen from the ground up. This disconnect between the global and the local presents an opportunity for the waste industry to recreate itself as a proactive force on sustainability that has roots at an everyday, domestic level.

The science is in - waste can take centre stage

The link between waste management and sustainability is easy to make, but if you think laterally, it's surprising just how broad the connection can be.

Waste can take centre stage, Source gyidi at Tumblr 

For example, let's look to renewable energy. The removal of fossil fuels from our electricity supply means more than just a reduction in greenhouse emissions, it also means reducing other undesirables like fly ash, water consumption and land displacement (but you already knew that).

Viewed in this context, the movement towards renewable energy is in fact a form of waste reduction, and therefore waste management. The same argument could be made for almost any other environmental enterprise.

Wastewater treatment? It reduces 'waste' nutrient outflows to the environment. New electric Holden Commodore? A great new way to reduce waste associated with petroleum consumption. Energy efficiency? A way of reducing all the wastes associated with energy production.

Under the banner of 'nature produces no waste', the industry has an opportunity to place itself right at the heart of the new dialogue on sustainability. When the public begins to see waste management as the core of sustainability, the industry will repeal rewards.

Materials matter - energy does not!

By and large, much of the public anxiety around sustainability appears to be focused on the fossil fuel industry. Some have termed this an 'energy crisis', but to my mind it is more appropriate to define it as a 'fuels crisis'.

The total amount of solar, wind, hydrological and geothermal energy available on earth is vastly beyond our needs. Consider that the Japanese earthquake last year released 3.9×10¹⁶ megajoules of energy in a matter of minutes, equivalent to 600 million times the energy of the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Energy is abundant,  Sun Inferno at deviantART by GuilleBot 

The challenge here is to find economical ways to collect and store this energy in materials, be they fuels or any other industrialised good. We then need to use these materials as efficiently as possible (read: design for waste reduction). Therefore, the energy challenge is more broadly a materials management challenge.

However, the materials challenge is more fundamental than just fossil fuels and solid wastes. The supply of many materials on earth is a zero sum game; we have a finite amount. This is true for bulk commodities like phosphorus or lithium, or even fresh water - but bites particularly hard when we get to materials like rare earth metals. Consider the global supply of Indium, used in electronics, is expected to only last 30 years.

Some have attempted to convey this message about material sustainability by talking about 'embodied' energy and the 'carbon footprint' of products, but to my mind these messages are too complicated.

'Economic dematerialisation' contains a lot of syllables but at its core is a simple message - 'don't waste as much' and then 'use materials sustainably'. The waste industry is in a unique position to place itself at the core of this new dialogue.

Walk the walk, talk the talk

This new framework starts with you. Waste managers need to communicate to the public, their clients and the friends they meet walking the dog that sustainability is effective waste management.

Communicate that there is no environmental problem that can't be tackled through better waste management.

By and large, renewables energy advocates, conservationists and politicians have dominated public commentary around sustainability. Hat's off to them - but they aren't doing the hard yards in terms of pollution reduction, management and mitigation that waste managers are.

The spotlight won't come to you. You need to go stand it in. If collectively we can make our voices heard, only then will the opportunity come to take the waste industry to the next level.

The tools through which waste will be revolutionised

I am a touch fanatical when it comes to charting a path for how waste might achieve the promised land of, well, no waste. I am especially excitable when it comes to coming up with different ways of approaching the question.

Why?

Because the way we are currently approaching the problem is barely keeping pace with the extraordinary development in waste production. The current systems are almost good enough for yesterday's problems, sorely lacking for today's, and irrelevant for tomorrow's. To me it is self-evident. We need to try something different.

In turning my ideas over and over, I keep coming back to four general strands of thought, four tools if you will, that will change the status quo. In no particular order, they are:

• Information surface area
• Diffused control
• Storytelling and culture
• Business models

Information surface area

Data is important, but not in the way it is currently conceived.

A lot is made of the regulator's need for data. A perpetually hungry beast, the regulator wants more and more data to be provided by waste managers. The problem is, the data then disappears into some silo or is aggregated to strip out any value there might have been.

This is pointless, only done to enhance the regulators feeling of control, and not what I am thinking of.

I am thinking of tools to capture and disseminate data on waste generation automatically, distributing that data broadly. The data is collected from the waste generator (not the collector). It is done so with a minimum of effort, and is broadly available. This data is then used by waste reprocessors to quickly respond in a customised service offering.

The point is to maximise what I'm going to call the "information surface area". The information surface area is the number of points that a given piece of information can touch, with each touch point enabling a decision to be made. A high information surface area is information that is broadly disseminated to people able to use it. Like a heat sink, it is highly effective simply because it has this high surface area. A low information surface area is reporting into a confidential data gathering body.

Information surface area. Source Azom.

This matters because the greater the information surface area, the greater the possibility that it will make the connection that is needed. In the context of waste, the right reprocessor will identify how a particular waste (including the time and quantity of generation) can become the feedstock for another industry. Opportunities will become clear to those who can do something with them. An efficient peer-to-peer system can be developed.

We see something similar in production right now, where inventory management systems are tightly integrated across suppliers to enable "just in time" production. To state the obvious, the suppliers do not expect their data to pass through the maw of a regulator. They provide it direct to one another.

Diffuse control

Having created a system that has a high information surface area, a diffuse (or distributed) system of control enables reprocessors to capitalise upon the information available. Being able to quickly swing into a new service offering once it becomes available will be the difference between winning and losing in this world.

Opportunities will bob up and be rapidly grabbed by the fast mover. The organisation that relies upon cascading approvals cannot work in this space. Arduous approvals processes suit systems where there is little change. In waste, they suit systems where the dumb, simple course is taken. Where waste is taken at its least useful and treated, rather than being taken at its most useful and reprocessed.

To have effective diffused control, you need organisations that empower and entrust their staff. You need organisations driven by values rather than KPIs, people who believe in the mission rather than chasing the next promotion.

I see a constellation of small, highly focused and nimble reprocessors all providing services in this space. Perhaps a better metaphor is a swarm. They may all be part of one overarching organisation provided the culture is right and they are free to respond. Because that is the key trait. The reprocessors are opportunistic.

Distributed waste handling systems. Source Wikipedia

This system works to assist in a broader economic change. It enables production to be shifted away from centralised systems working on massively global supply lines, and move to distributed systems where small, highly connected factories can be found throughout. With the artful work of innovative reprocessors, they have the materials  ("waste") they need, and can benefit from short, resilient, multi-path supply lines.

And so the revolution in waste will help to revolutionise production in general

Storytelling and culture

The stories we tell ourselves strongly determine the future we create for ourselves. We shape our future by telling ourselves about what it will look like

For this reason, the stories we tell ourselves of waste, the culture we create around it, is important. Not in the sense of Soviet social realism, where we command people to tell the stories that enliven our ideology. This change doesn't need that sort of total social control. Instead, it is the stories that the industry tells itself.

Rather than telling itself that economies of scale are necessary, and then forcing everything into this narrative, the industry could tell itself stories around how vital the raw materials are. Rather than telling itself that the object is to efficiently dispose of materials, it could tell itself that the purpose of the industry is reinvigorate materials and thus whole societies.

The story telling is most important within an organisation. It is an organisation's culture, and I think that the future of waste will be shaped by extraordinary organisations that have powerful cultures. These organisations will be driven by their mission, and will bend all efforts to the achievement of this mission.

Storytelling. Source: Wikipedia

To me I think that mission will become as large as total domination of the flow of materials through the economy. These organisations will shunt out the raw materials exploiters, the end of life treaters, and guide materials along each step of their way around and around the economy. "Zero waste" won't make sense in this context, just as unwanted cash makes no sense when you have bankers able to lend it out at a profit.

Still, that is just me. The point is less what the mission might be (though it will revolve around waste reprocessing), and more that it will be a strong narrative that brings a special focus to the organisation. This sort of organisation will prevail over those eking out market share in a commoditised waste disposal business.

Business models

The final of my four tools is the business model.

For the last few decades, the business model in waste management has been to build business by cutting costs. By and large, that has meant scale, which in turns reduces reprocessing. It is a linear, win-lose model.

A new way of approaching waste management will see these business models jettisoned in favour of more subtle ways of making money. Perhaps there will be greater vertical integration, with reprocessors taking their materials a long way down the value chain before they sell them on. Perhaps there will be approaches where a loss leading piece of equipment is provided for a long tail of revenue (ie the Nespresso model of cheap coffee machines that can only take Nespresso pods). Perhaps there might be a freemium approach to waste management (free for a basic service, and a premium for a desirable extra service).

In any event, the introduction of sophistication and subtlety into this world will see an explosion of business models. That is a good thing. It will also see the traditional business model suffer and ultimately suffer a collapse of its own doing.


These, then, are my four tools. You'll note that none of them rely upon central fiat, and all of them are related to each other. Once this path is started down, it will grow incredible change.

Steam and waste

At the turn of the 20th century, there was nothing bigger than steam locomotives. They ruled the world, and you couldn't imagine the world of transportation without them. By 1950, the steam locomotive had been refined to an immense variety, with extraordinary engineering.

The locomotive below, the Mallard, holds the record as the fastest steam locomotive. It was built in 1938 and saw service through until 1963. It reached 202.58 km/hr.

"Mallard" at the National Railway Museum at York. Source: Wikipedia

Perhaps the best known steam locomotive, George Stephenson's The Rocket was built less than 110 years earlier in 1829. It had a top speed of 45 km/hr

Contemporary drawing of Rocket, Source: Wikipedia

For the years between, there was immense innovation in design to achieve a whole range of objectives. Steam locomotives achieved all sorts of outcomes, made the horse and cart all but redundant and ushered in immense change.

When the Ford Motor Company launched the Model T in 1908, the world of steam could never imagine that its world had just changed forever. But it did. In the space of a few decades, the car and personalised transport had changed everything. The urban form, the cultural psyche, even our modes of production.

At the turn of the 21st century, there is nothing bigger in the world of waste than a grand waste facility. They are imposing and yet sleek, and attract some of the most incredibly beautiful architecture. They dominate a world where landfill and waste is a problem to be solved by bigger and more sophisticated waste processing plants.

Isle of Man incinerator. Source: AEC online

They really started with the invention of the "refuse destructor" in 1875.

Just as there was significant diversity of design and application of the steam locomotive, so too there has been diversity in waste processing facilities. They have not yet, to my mind, had their Model T moment.

That moment is coming.

It will be a moment where waste ceases to be seen as a waste to be treated in isolation from an economy, but rather a resource to be incorporated into the economy.

I suspect that the change will radically dentralise waste, just as the car decentralised transport. I also suspect it will be driven by the capabilities that come from essentially free data, leading to a "peer to peer" waste handling system.

Just as the car removed the need to rely upon railways to get you to where you wanted to be, you just took yourself there, so too a peer to peer waste network will see waste transferred as a resource outside the infrastructure channels.

It will see data around waste becoming ubiquitous, creating a whole new market of intermediaries who "arbitrage" waste from a generator and deliver it to a manufacturer who needs that waste as a feedstock. Those intermediaries may, of course, refine and repackage the waste to suit, but they will not see themselves as waste operators.

When this change happens, the "economies of scale" which drive current waste handling will quickly become a liability. The new world will go to the nimble, the small scaled, the infinitely diverse. Sure, the world will rest on some pieces of infrastructure, but that infrastructure will no longer define the world.

I would take it further. The new world of waste will redefine how we see our manufacturing, our cities, ourselves. I don't quite know how this will happen, but I think it will run as deep as the cultural reverberation of the car (individuality and freedom getting an especial boost from the car).

To have the world shift from its current "single pass system", where materials are extracted, consumed and then dumped, and to a world in which materials are cycled through the economy over and over will be immense in its cultural impact.

For the time being, we continue to look at waste as a problem to be solved by large, sophisticated and incredibly complex waste processing plants. Just as transportation was seen as a problem to be solved by large, sophisticated and incredibly complex steam locomotives.

When this paradigm flips, it will flip rapidly. Fortunes will be made and lost, and waste will cease to be. We will have made another step forward in more efficient consumption of resources. This shift will, no doubt, bring with it a whole new set of problems. Problems that we cannot even conceive right now, but we need to make the shift all the same.

Garbologie pause and take stock

Since I started this Garbologie blog two months ago, I have written 59 posts. That has been pretty much a post every week day.

The results have been heartening, but not overpowering. There has been a lovely level of interest (and thank you for your comments and support), but I think I can do better. I think my writing can be more effective. So I'm going to pause, take stock, refine the offering.


There is still plenty to write about, still enough for daily posts, but I don't think I'm doing them justice. The biggest thing I've learned from my readings is to be prepared to change what is not working.

Take Seth Godin: think about what you obsess over. In my case, it's not so much obsessing over pageview numbers or followers (good god, not THAT would be a sorry tale), but rather obsessing about a daily post. That's not really the point of the blog. Instead, the point is to explore ideas and recombine them into something great. An obsession on daily posts is getting in the way.

Or, if you don't like Seth, take my favourite writer, thinker, explorer: AJ Leon. His manifesto The Life and Times of a Remarkable Misfit has a great piece: "You can't have it both ways". The take away is "Your work is either remarkable or it isn't". My daily posts are not remarkable. In fact they are probably getting in the way of remarkable. Time to get remarkable.

It's more explicit in Jonathan Fields. He writes of taking the time out to do his great work, shifting gears, refocussing. And he is spot on, if coming from loftier heights of renown. Scrambling to write is not going to get me to my great work of realising the vision of a waste free world that I can hear, taste and touch. Thinking and researching, working up ideas properly, that will. Or is more likely to.

And there has been so much more. The message is to not accept average. So I won't. The message is to be prepared to change what isn't working. So I will.


There will still be regular posts, but they will be weekly. Every Sunday evening.

Rather than writing a fast post every weekday evening, I'll spend some more time to research a fuller post, round out the ideas and present it all properly.

I will also be working offline to develop a unified vision. Call it a manifesto if you will (or, my preferred term, a manfiesto). It is how I believe the world can change for the better, but specifically from the perspective of waste.

I am still around, just not here until Sundays. You will see me on my facebook page and twitter, and I welcome you there to see what I'm thinking. I do, on occasion.

Solving tomorrow's waste problems

Here's the thing.

I was watching the twitter stream roar by me the other day, and my eyes lit upon a tweet from Umair Haque linking the reader to a blog post on the HBR (Harvard Business Review) site. With the title If you were the next Steve Jobs..., it was definite click bait. So I clicked.

The article was great, drawing from the particular to the general in a very elegant manner. I'll let you read it to  see for yourself, but key to the article was the idea that tomorrow's problems will not be solved by today's institutions. To solve tomorrow's problems will require the following to be addressed:

• Singularity
• Sociality
• Spontaneity
• Synchronicity
• Solubility

Yep, ok, so they all begin with S. They probably don't make quite as much sense beginning with S's, but it kind of works. 

Anyway, the S's are put forward in a general context, but apply equally to tomorrow's waste problems. Here's how.

Singularity

The idea put by Umair is that business will get increasingly personalised, and the trick is to provide the "mass customisation" to service it. That is true in waste management on two levels.

First, each customer (ie waste generator, but also purchasers of recycler product) wants you to not just understand their business, but tailor your service to meet their needs. Dealing with stables? They might want regular collections, and may even want a solution to keep worming products out so that the stable manure can be composted. Different for food courts, and different again for manufacturing. It is time to go beyond the days of supplying the same bin service to all customers.

The second aspect to singularity is that each material type will be increasingly dealt with separately. Collection and treatment will be better tailored to gain the most value from the material. It is time to go beyond the days of bulking all waste together and then landfilling or burning it.

Sociality

Umair talks of people wanting a relationship, even if it is understood by all to be pretty tightly constrained.

Does this apply to waste? Absolutely! The concept of waste goes to the core of what people are and do. What people throw away can define them (in psychology that would be the "Other", or in manufacturing the quality of a product is defined by what is rejected). People know this, and given the chance, want to be part of a community around waste. Waste is, at heart, a social thing as expressed by Don Delillo in Underworld:

He looked at all that soaring garbage and knew for the first time what his job was all about. Not engineering or transportation or source reduction. He dealt in human behaviour, people's habits and impulses, their uncontrollable needs and innocent wishes, maybe their passions, certainly their excesses and indulgences but their kindness too, their generosity, and the question was how to keep this mass metabolism from overwhelming us.

People also want waste operators to be a responsible part of their community. They do not want stinking tips, rogue contractors or plants imposed on them. The waste is generated by the community and needs to be treated within the community. Scale down rather than up.

Spontaneity

Waste can be a very staid business. Plants are built for decades, and seek to constrain uncertainty by "consistent" supply. This makes the business dumb.

The new breed will see businesses pop up or rapidly shift to exploit opportunities as they arise. A new waste type emerges, and businesses will pounce on it to recover the materials. 

It will be a business that is decentralised to clever and committed people on the ground, a business that tries new ideas regularly in search of the best. It will promote a culture of collaboration.

Synchronicity

The new waste business will seem to be employing black magic. It will understand customers (generators and purchasers of product) so completely that their needs will be completely anticipated.

The new waste business will be able to collect, refine and connect waste materials. It might just act as a match-maker, or data publisher, or any number of things to connect wastes (by-products) with consumers.

The new world of waste will see pervasive data and well anticipated needs such that a major source of waste - mismatched generation against downstream needs - can be overcome.

Solubility

This is the cool bit, and perhaps the obvious bit. For all of the above to come together, institutions (businesses, governments, whatever) need to look at the currently unsolved problems and imagine a solution.

They need to look at the current squandering of materials and refuse to accept the status quo, to insist that a solution can be found and that they will find it.

It needs people who believe that, as Archimedes put it, with a fulcrum and a long enough lever, they can move the world.

Tribal Leadership and waste

I recently finished the book Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright, a management book about natural groups ("tribes"), and how an organisation's culture can be lifted by focusing on the culture of these tribes.

The book is particularly interesting because the writers have determined, through research, that a tribe's culture can be revealed by the language that its members use. Five stages are described, and key themes of each stage are:

• Stage 1: "Life sucks"
• Stage 2: My life sucks"
• Stage 3: "I'm great (and you're not)"
• Stage 4: "We're great (and they're not)"
• Stage 5: "Life is great"

As a person/organisation moves up the Stages, their personal effectiveness leaps ahead.

The main cultural shift described in the book is the shift from Stage 3 individualism to Stage 4 collaboration. Much of business is argued to be in Stage 3, where the focus is on winning as an individual (hence the focus on the Stage 3 to Stage 4 shift).

If you had to comment on the waste management industry as a whole, you would probably conclude that it generally operates in Stage 2 (life sucks - I have to work in this low level role at the tip, or driving this truck or whatever). 

Over the dominance of Stage 2 there is a small minority operating at Stage 3; they consider themselves to have been lifted from the "squalor". This might be Superintendents or others, and they characterise themselves as competing (and winning) at the expense of the rest.

For the industry to truly contribute to a challenge beyond self-advancement, and specifically to see itself as contributing to a broad environmental/social challenge of stopping waste, it must operate at Stage 4 at a minimum.

The problem is, argue the authors, Stage 4 cannot be commanded. It must be nurtured through explicit development of Stage 4 tribal culture. I won't go into how, but it comes down to attracting a critical mass of like-minded people, and an almost personal epiphany for each member of the tribe.

The point is that you cannot impose a Stage 4 culture on an organisation that is not working within this culture. Trying to comes across as cynical or hopelessly naive, or even both. It becomes on of those pathetic examples of dippy sloganeering that is so often mocked. And yet those slogans show the way once you have made the leap to Stage 4.

To me, this is where the waste industry faces its some of its biggest challenges. People who think about waste come up with succinct formulations of the problem and then put that out there. It falls on deaf ears. The thoughtful solutions can only be implemented by the people working in the field, and they are literally unable to hear the formulation. It is spoken in an alien tongue. The messages of "cradle to cradle" and "zeronauts" get dismissed because they make no sense. They are fantasy, not relevant in the real world.

It would seem that a way to actually advance the industry is to encourage that epiphany, to bring people to Stage 4, rather than focus on yet new formulations. It won't happen as simply as this, in part because people who have experienced the epiphany saw it through some formulation that struck them at the right time and in the right way. They believe they are helping by refining their pithy slogans.

So I am left wondering. Imagine how much good could be achieved if an organisation was created that quite explicitly targeted a Stage 4 culture. It recruited people who worked in this space, and did everything in its power to maintain that space. I think such an organisation would be incredibly powerful. 

A waste organisation that saw culture and the greater good as central to its mission, the prism through which it made all other decisions. No doubt some have done this, but I'm not aware of them. It is much more common to see organisations where there are a few converts who place a veneer of culture across the organisation. It never really rings true, and so never really achieves what it could. 

A waste organisation suffused right through with an incredible culture, now that is something I would like to be a part of.

Don Delillo, Underworld, and waste

An amazingly beautiful book, should you ever wish to take the time to read it, is Underworld by Don Delillo. It has, in my opinion, the most consistently tightly written opening chapter of any book. I remember when I first read it, I was stunned by this masterpiece of an opening.

It is not a short book. My paperback copy is 827 pages, and it deserves careful reading. But it repays itself in spades as a book of great complexity.

I won't attempt to explain the book here (mainly because it has been too long since I read it), but one of the themes in the book, and perhaps the inspiration for the title, is the waste that lies suppressed beneath society. It is quite literal (a key character is a waste management executive), but also figurative in the subconscious urges beneath the glittering conscious.

Delillo's writing around waste alone is quite astounding. Take this from Chapter 1 of Part 3:

The construction crew had gone for the day. We stood above a hole in the earth, an engineered crater five hundred feet deep, maybe a mile across, strewn with snub-nosed machines along the terraced stretches and covered across much of the sloped bottom by an immense shimmering sheet, a polyethylene skin, silvery blue, that caught cloudmotion and rolled in the wind. I was taken by surprise. The sight of this thing, the enormous gouged bowl lined with artful plastic, was the first material sign I'd had that this was a business of a certain drastic grandeur, even a kind of greatness, maybe - the red-tailed hawks transparent in the setting sun and the spring stalks of yucca tall as wishing wands and this high-density membrane that was oddly and equally beautiful in a way, a prophylactic device, a gas-control system, and the crater it layered that would accept thousands of tons of garbage a day, your trash and mine, for desert burial.

He captures that horrific grandeur that comes from the extraordinary feat of seaming together hectares of plastic. The creation of incredible vastness, a mark on the world that surely leaves nature in awe. It is "man over nature", the awe that inspired totalitarian regimes (communist and fascist), a sense of total release into the void of utter disempowerment. That is landfill. Truck after truck streaming in, disgorging, overwhelming you with the sheer scale and tempting you to retreat to you safe shell of domesticity.

Or this, from Chapter 4 of Part 1:

We built pyramids of waste above and below the earth. The more hazardous the waste, the deeper we tried to sink it. The word plutonium comes from Pluto, god of the dead and ruler of the underworld. They took him out to the marshes and wasted him as we say today, or used to say until it got changed to something else.

The connection between Pluto, ruler of the underworld (and in astrology, the subconscious), and waste is made explicit. Radioactive waste is sent down to Pluto, buried down deep with all of our other subterranean fears.

And finally (at least in this brief essay), the whole world of a waste manager is summed up in Chapter 3 of Part 2:

He looked at all that soaring garbage and knew for the first time what his job was all about. Not engineering or transportation or source reduction. He dealt in human behaviour, people's habits and impulses, their uncontrollable needs and innocent wishes, maybe their passions, certainly their excesses and indulgences but their kindness too, their generosity, and the question was how to keep this mass metabolism from overwhelming us.

I couldn't put it better myself, and his words provide a window into the underworld. An underworld that is much of my world (do I represent Pluto or Persephone?), and an underworld that I continue to explore through this blog.

Seven principles for success in waste ventures

I came across a post today on The Smarter Business Blog about lessons learned in starting a sustainable business, and it gave me to thinking about what might be some principles for success in waste ventures.

First, let me get the cynicism out of the way. The greatest principle for success in waste ventures is to run a landfill, especially if your local regulator doesn't like landfill. The barriers to entry will be so high, and you will have such a stranglehold on the market that you will be too big to fail. All sorts of sins will be forgiven because the waste needs a home.

There, that's out of the way. I'm not interested in landfill.

The success factors for responsible waste ventures are common to the success factors in the blog. Some I would list from my own experience.are:

1. Have passion. Do what you believe in, and believe in something big. I think that stars in the waste world truly believe that they will change the world.
2. Make an awesome culture. People really believe about waste, and people need to make their views real. A great culture lets this happen. It really isn't good enough to "do culture" by a retreat for management followed by a few damp squib programmes. Live it, breath it, talk it every chance you get. Let you decisions be guided by the culture. Make the venture the sort of place where people feel they can be them, explore themselves. Never sell out your culture for some other "more important" issue (including finances). Nothing is more important than a lived culture. It doesn't even need to cost money.
3. Have courage. Waste is fundamentally conservative, and if you are doing something new, most people will tell you it can't be done. Lines like "if that was possible, others would already be doing it". Or "we tried that 30 years ago and it didn't work".
4. Play to win, but be prepared to lose. Waste is a complicated business beneath a mask of simplicity. You will make mistakes navigating your way. Many mistakes. Be prepared. Persist, but at the same time keep a weather eye out for clues that things won't get better and it is all best cut loose.
5. Make a decision. Perfection is not that important in a waste venture. You can always go back and fix things once you've started them. Not ideal, but far better than not starting at all.
6. Let things grow, rather than assume it is built fully grown. There are so many wrecks of waste businesses where capital is invested for the full scale operations, disregarding that full scale may not happen for years. You don't need polished stainless steel for your first go. A rough-as-guts version is good enough to start. Do that, save your money to grow your business and become profitable.
7. Have a life. It's all too easy when you are changing the world to cram your life full with it. Don't. Read fiction, have a hobby, enjoy your family, work civilised hours. Do the human stuff. Waste is, at heart, a human experience. You need to be human, and you will benefit from the new perspective that come from stepping out of the bubble.

I don't claim that these are comprehensive, but they are a starting point for me.

I'd welcome your thoughts.

Towards a clever waste world

I had the opportunity (quite) a few years ago to speak with an amazingly broad cross-section of one of Australia's leading universities about potential research in waste. It was one of those mind-popping, eye-opening moments when you realise just how much change you might make.

To take it back a step, I was very fortunate to come across a broad thinking leader at the university who wanted to build research connections. We met and talked, and he soon realised that I wanted to explore truly interdisciplinary work rather than the engineering you might expect given I was running large waste facilities.

I think we riffed off each other, and we came up with a scope for a discussion that encompassed as many faculties of the university as it could.

I don't remember the exact faculties represented, but I do remember turning up to the incredible meeting hall with a huge table and truly engaged people around it. My recollection was that there was representation from:

• Architecture
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Marketing
• Law
• Business
• Mechanical Engineering

The ideas that emerged were incredible. We could all, I think, see that each discipline had an incredible amount to add to revolutionise waste. It was a beautiful moment of clever minds seeing the possible.

Now I know that "revolution" is a tad overused, and I am as guilty as any, but you could truly get the sense of a vision that unearthed all sorts of incredible advances. A body of endeavour that would integrate disparate disciplines, bringing a holistic solution to the problem. This was the sort of opportunity that waste needs.

Unfortunately (and why do these stories so often end like this), the revolution never had a chance. It turned out that I was a little bit ahead of where my organisation wanted to be, and nobody else could catch the vision. Sure, some partnerships started (though they stopped after I left the organisation), and some good work was done. The revolution died a death because nobody could support it as a whole.

But, of course, it's not really dead. It lives on inside me, and hopefully also the others present. A vision once held is only reluctantly given up, especially if you refuse to accept the rut of mediocrity or the comfort of cynicism. I have been looking for a way to bring the vision to pass, and the path is steadily coming clear.

The path involves my thinking, these writings, my experimentation with new ventures. It involves those small but bright sparks of conversation that fly off my work, some of which are sure to find some dry tinder and from there grow to an inferno that will sweep the world.

Somehow, in some form, this particular opportunity will reform among many others. It will reform in a blaze of strikes, of sparks, of thoughts. It won't reform perfect, but rather hungry to be shaped by impatient minds. By clever minds who see a better direction even though they don't know the destination.

For I think a clever waste world is the best chance we have to show what we really can achieve.

The waste shadow economy explained - un-production

My last post created a few questions marks that probably should have been settled with the initial post. I obviously didn't do a great job explaining myself first time around, so I'll try again.

The "real economy"

My thinking around the economy is centred on the consumer. It's probably not really an economy, but just the production process. Still, I'll call it an economy because the production/consumption duo seems to harness so much of an economy's energy.

The first step is resource extraction. This might be agriculture, mining, forestry, fishing. All of those things where we go out and extract resources from the environment. The value of these resources is typically low, and very rarely reflects their full environmental value.

The next step is refining the resources. So wool is classed and washed, ore refined into metal, wood milled into timber or woodchip and so on. The point is that the resource is made more pure.

The purified resource then explodes into an almost limitless array of manufacturing, combined with all sorts of other materials in potentially many different steps that span the world, leading eventually to products.

The products are marketed, packaged, marketed, distributed, marketed. Purchased.

All the way along this process, labour and knowledge is added. The output of each step is typically more valuable than the constituent parts. In fact, I think that is pretty close to a fundamental requirement. Items become more valuable as they move through the process.

The products are consumed. At this point, the materials stop increasing in value. In fact, the materials reverse their value proposition and become waste. Waste comes at a cost to the holder.

Conventional logic sees waste then handled to minimise this cost. Dumping, landfill, incineration. It is all an extension of the conventional logic. The conventional economy.

The shadow economy

What I see as the shadow economy, perhaps the mirror economy, is the creation of a whole system to un-produce products.

The "waste" is first undistributed. It is collected from consumers in various guises, different levels of sorting, processing and consolidating depending on the product.

Then comes the un-manufacturing, where the materials are extracted from the un-products. This might happen in one step, or many. It eventually leads to a purified resource. Resource extraction can stop.

I see this as a shadow economy because, for it to fully unflower, it requires the depth of activity that characterises the "real economy". It requires entrepreneurs to be permitted to pursue ever increasing levels of refinement in activity. And it requires the dead hand of cheap waste disposal to be lifted.

The shadow economy needs the clever marketers, clever lawyers, clever engineers, clever salespeople, clever entrrepreneurs. In short, it needs all of those people who make the "real economy" so vibrant. It needs government to take a light but firm touch, mainly to free the shadow economy from disposal thinking, but otherwise to get out of the way.

It is a beast of such simplicity in its underlying rules, but unflowering into such complexity and beauty in its final form, that the shorthand of a shadow economy doesn't really do it justice.