Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 7: The question of the futureWaste compounds waste. Take human excrement. Shit is unpleasant and dangerous butis basically composed of nutrients in roughly the same proportions as those containedin artificial fertiliser: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It is also a potential sourceof energy. It is naturally contaminated with pathogens from the human gut which canbe treated fairly easily. It is unnaturally contaminated with heavy metals and chemicalcompounds because people themselves now carry a ‘body burden’ of pollutants.Metals can be sedimented out, but the sediments then need disposal. Many chemicalcompounds are more difficult to remove. Thus the toxic environment created bycapital compromises the value of sewage as manure. Conventional plants are not builtto make sewage available for energy or manure. Rather, they use high energy inputsand chemical disinfectants and, at the end, produce a toxic sludge. Similarly, a largeportion of the municipal waste stream – invariably more than half and estimated atup to 70% in India – is composed of garden waste and food which, with little effort,could be separated, composted and returned as energy to the soil. In landfills, thisresource turns toxic.In Paul Connett’s view, waste is a low-tech problem that has been compounded ratherthan addressed by high-tech solutions. 107 The experience of recycling would seem toconfirm this view. North and South, the most successful recycling is relatively low tech.At the Bogota conference, delegates observed that Southern countries are adoptingcostly and environmentally destructive first world technologies such as compactortrucks and incinerators. They argued that informal systems are more efficient andagreed “to reject incineration and burial-based processing and defend systems thatsupport the popular economy” [quoted in Bonner 2008: 9].Box 22 shows that the better part of municipal waste disposal is unnecessary. Thefigures for reduction achieved through recycling are not strictly comparable as theywere developed using different methodologies. Nevertheless, it is striking that theresults from informal recycling in the South are at least as good as those from formalisedrecycling in the North.Such high rates of diversion rely first on composting because of the high proportionof ‘wet waste’. In these examples, composting is based on a variety of techniquesusing static piles, windrows, worm composting or vessels such as bio-digesters. Peoplecompost waste even in cramped conditions using small pots on the balconies of flats.107 Talk given at the launching of Target Zero Canada, Toronto, Canada, November 21, 2000.- 184 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation