Teru Talk Newsletter

Teru's Trash Talk

Let's remake ourselves for the New Year. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle is so 2015!

In Jolly Ol' England, the non-profit Waste and Resource Action Programme, fondly called WRAP, is proposing instead that we globally adopt the 3Rs of the Future: Re-Invent at the 'design stage', Re-Think a product's 'use phase', and Re-Define each product's 'end-of-life'. The organization's reasoning makes as much sense for North America as for Europe.

Modern waste management needs to find its rightful place within the concept of a circular materials pathway rather than the traditional linear make-use-dispose economy. It makes sense to stretch our thinking around the entire pathway of resource events: new stuff to old stuff, back to new stuff. In other words, circular.

We know that just good waste collection doesn't solve the problem of recovering resources from trash. We understand that shipping the 'recyclate' goodies off to distant markets may cause more harm than good, given the transport emissions and loss of local benefit. We can break down otherwise unusable crud to the basic raw materials. If we get the conversion that far, it is a no-brainer to feed those foundation resources to remanufacturing industries. Now let's translate these steps into the New & Improved 3Rs. We can start anywhere in the cycle; to really understand how this fits in the new concept, let's move backwards along the circular path.

Start with the Remanufacturing stage, and Re-Invent how we make new things, where we make things, and what materials we use to make those things. The new design should result in a product that is simpler to pull apart into reusable and recyclable components, use increasingly more raw materials converted from the local discards, and go back into the marketplace with far less packaging.

Re-Thinking how we use goods 'wraps' around the current mantra of waste prevention, encompassing Reduce and Reuse, redistributing edible but unmarketable produce, more carefully portioning and serving food in our restaurants, and remaking used textiles into new clothing. Any time we can short-circuit the process of new things becoming old things, we have extended that thing's useful life and saved money, energy, and resources in the process.

Now Re-Define what comes next when a product hits the end of its useful life. Clean and local waste conversion is a logical end-point of recycling and the starting point of the remanufacturing stage. To make that step work, we must meet remanufacturer's specifications. Higher quality and quantity foundation resources will attract industries that can use those materials. New business will be attracted to areas where it is cheaper to manage the types of waste they generate. Everything we need to make new stuff is right there in our old stuff. Think backward along the path of the Circular Economy to build out the supply chains, and the market draw will follow. That just makes good business sense.

Hey Rube!

This notion of the 3Rs of the Future applies across the spectrum from individuals to communities, institutions, companies, and countries. Teru will be stretching around the concept this quarter; we ask that each of you try the ideas on and let us know how they fit.

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