Government in waste - help or hindrance?

Whenever there is talk of waste and recycling, there is talk of how the Government can assist. Should it?

On the plus side, Government obviously has loads of cash, and can make all sorts of laws to reinforce the business model of a recycling business. It can mandate recycling of particular materials, put in place landfill bans, impose landfill taxes and subsidise recycling business.

But should it? Perhaps, under certain circumstances, however this is going to naturally lead to a certain type of industry. It will favour the large and established over the small and nimble. It will favour those who control the market over those who would disrupt it. It will favour the bureaucratic over the free-wheeling. It will favour monumental infrastructure over human scale business model innovations.

Government will take a risk averse approach and channel money to organisations that, whilst they might lead to significant improvement, will not lead to great improvements. Organisations that are exciting and disruptive, that might make massive changes, won't attract support because they could equally fail hugely. Government will look to minimise downside, not maximise upside.

Be this as it may, I would argue that the question is posed the wrong way. Instead, the better question is "should waste and recycling businesses seek Government support?" And I suggest that the answer is resoundingly "No!"

Chasing Government support takes a lot of effort. More importantly, the things you have to do to your business model to meet Government funding requirements will also cripple your business. You will start as a nimble organisation, reliant on none, and end up gummed up with a bureaucracy that you never believed possible. And certainly never needed.

In this field that is ripe for disruption, ready for upstarts, primed for somebody to change everything, you don't need to be wasting your time convincing the Government. Use that time to surround yourself with investors who get what you are trying to do and will help you get there.

Murray Bookchin, waste and recycling

It is the classic story. Several years ago I was browsing through a second hand bookshop, one of the great pleasures in life, and stumbled across Toward an Ecological Society. It was a collection of essays by an author I'd never heard of, Murray Bookchin. It proved to become one of my favourite books of all time, and especially the title essay.

In brief, Bookchin argues that society needs to move from a central approach of domination - dominating women, people, animals, nature in general, and recognise itself as a part of a whole. He contrasts ecological thinking with environmentalist thinking. Ecological thinking is revolutionary, seeking to reform society in a technologically advanced harmony with nature. Environmentalist thinking is geared around maximum exploitation (or domination) of nature.

I get this. As an environmental engineer, my career is all about doing what is required to minimise environmental impact. It presumes it can know the impacts of actions in extraordinarily complex and non-linear systems. It never asks how the question can be reframed such that the question of environmental impact becomes inconceivable. An analogy - we don't walk down the street looking to minimise broken limbs. It is inconceivable that we should harm ourselves.

Bookchin also writes of human scaled technology. This is where things come close to home for waste management, and indeed, he makes explicit reference to the failures of centralised, monumentalist waste management. To take it further, he is critical of the "economies of scale" and "leave it to us" approach of waste management which ultimately leads to monster landfill, incinerators and other base level waste systems. This is everything a human scale waste system is not.

A human scale system involves humans. It works with humans to reduce their waste in the first place, then engage in sorting their waste, and ultimately using high technology to process waste. It is an approach of great subtlety.

It doesn't need these elaborate efforts at "community engagement" to convince people that they really do need this big plant which will solve their problems. Instead, it responds to the desires of people to actually engage. It is increasingly plausible as people move from trusting "experts" to trusting the crowd, increasingly likely as technology leaps forward. Our waste plants are getting smaller, and people are doing more themselves.

Toward an Ecological Society, Murray Bookchin. Image courtesy of Amazon

Ultimately, the tale of Bookchin is a tale of hope over despair. We can control our destiny. It is reasonable to know your world. We can live in a world that is not free of waste, but rather enables each of us to put out waste back into the productive economy. We can change the world one decision, one action at a time.

And most importantly, we can build business models around this. We can build business models that engage with people, deliver on their core values, prevent waste to landfill and are profitable. All at the same time. This is only impossible if we lock ourselves into the domination mindset, the "grow or perish", "big is best", "economy of scale" inanity.

It is an opportunity that is set to become real as intelligent people gather around heretical ideas. It is the future I want to live.

As for Bookchin, he passed away in 2006, 85 years of age and having lived a life filled with crystal clear polemic.