CONCEPTS AND
2.2 DEFINING THE SCOPE AND COVERAGE OF THE GWMO
Building on a discussion of what the GWMO means by ‘waste’, this section sets out the ‘system boundary’
for the GWMO, with a summary provided in Table 2.1 at the end. This is explained within the context of the life-cycle of materials and products (Figure 2.1).
2.2.1 What does the GWMO mean by waste?
‘Waste’ is a very broad concept. The GWMO focuses on one group of the many usages of the word ‘waste’:
unwanted or discarded materials ‘rejected as useless, unneeded or excess to requirements’.6 Waste can be viewed as the combination of four wrongs - a wrong substance, in a wrong quality, in a wrong place at a wrong time.7
Even this usage of ‘waste’ is still very broad, as it includes such unwanted outputs of human activity as gases, liquids and solids as well as discharges to the three environmental receiving media of air, water and land. The UN Statistics Division uses the term ‘residuals’ rather than ‘waste’ in this broad context, where they comprise one of six components of a comprehensive set of environmental statistics.8 ‘Residuals’ are then subdivided into three parts: emissions to air, generation of wastewater and generation of wastes.
It is in this rather narrower context that internationally agreed definitions of ‘waste’ exist, for instance within the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, which has 183 Parties9 and is thus nearly universal. The Basel Convention defines ‘wastes’ as ‘substances or objects which are disposed of or are intended to be disposed of or are required to be disposed of by the provisions of national law’. This includes substances or objects which are subject to disposal operations which either lead to or do not lead to the possibility of resource recovery, recycling, reclamation, direct re-use or alternative uses.10 A colloquial summary of this definition of ‘wastes’ might simply be ‘stuff people throw away’.
6 Taken from the authoritative Chambers 21st Century Dictionary. http://www.chambers.co.uk/search.php 7 Huda (2008), listed in Annex A, Chapter 1, Waste management.
8 UNSD (2013), listed in Annex A, Chapter 2, Data and indicators. The six components are: 1. Environmental conditions and quality; 2. Environmental resources and their use;
3 Residuals; 4. Extreme events and disasters; 5. Human settlements and environmental health; and 6. Environmental protection, management and engagement.
9 Current as of August 2015. The updated status of ratifications is available at http://www.basel.int/Countries/StatusofRatifications/PartiesSignatories/tabid/4499/Default.
aspx. Further information on the Basel Convention and other Multilateral Environmental Agreements is given in Box 4.13.
10 For the list of such operations, reference is made to Annex IV of the Basel Convention, available from http://www.basel.int/Portals/4/Basel%20Convention/docs/text/
BaselConventionText-e.pdf
Background, definitions, concepts and indicators 23
One way of visualizing the difference between ‘wastes’, as defined by the Basel Convention, and emissions to the atmosphere or to receiving water bodies, is that wastes are collected, stored and managed. The impacts are thus delayed and perhaps moved elsewhere. In contrast, emissions may first be treated and are then discharged locally into the atmosphere or receiving water bodies, where they are generally dispersed relatively quickly - the impacts are thus more immediate. As a result, legislation and technologies for environmental control of ’residuals’ have traditionally been subdivided largely by the receiving media - air pollution control, water pollution control and waste management (often termed solid waste management, and broadly synonymous with what might be termed ‘land pollution control’).
So the GWMO is broadly following the accepted international concept and definition of ‘wastes’. However, the GWMO is also taking a holistic approach: environmental management works best if policy and regulatory control, and the agencies in charge of each, are integrated across pollution control (to air, water and land) and waste management. While these are often separate control regimes, the interfaces between them need to be strong. Control of air pollution to meet emissions standards concentrates the contaminants as air pollution control (APC) residues; the treatment of both human sewage and other wastewaters to meet discharge standards concentrates the contaminants in sludges; both APC residues and wastewater treatment sludges then become ‘solid wastes’ requiring some form of handling and/or disposal, often to land. In this sense, the huge progress around the world over the last 50 years in controlling air and water pollution has further increased the challenges of (solid) waste management, which was in many ways a less immediate and thus a less high-profile issue. But unless (solid) waste management is tackled alongside air and water pollution control, the pollution is merely shifted from one receiving medium to another. Former uncontrolled dumpsites, particularly those that have received hazardous waste, are a major category of contaminated site.
The function of the kidneys might be a useful analogy for waste management - each removes contaminants from the materials flowing through the system and concentrates them into ‘waste’ which then needs to be collected and managed. The existence of environmentally sound waste management is thus a prerequisite for the effective control of hazardous chemicals.
2.2.2 Waste as a resource
The mandate for the GWMO is: ‘To develop a global outlook of challenges, trends and policies in relation to waste prevention, minimization and management …’. So the GWMO is about waste and resource management, looking upstream at waste prevention and all of the components of a circular economy as well as downstream at the management of wastes after they have been discarded (Figure 2.1). Using resources more efficiently and generating less waste reduces business costs while providing other upstream benefits such as lower vulnerability to unreliable supplies, decreased dependency on global markets for critical materials and reduced depletion of natural capital stocks (or natural resources expenditure). It also reduces risks to public health and the environment.
Looking upstream in Figure 2.1, the scope of the GWMO firmly includes waste prevention, which interacts strongly with sustainable consumption and production (SCP),11 which looks at the implications of, among other aspects, the design, manufacturing and packaging of products in the market, as well as consumption patterns and lifestyles. Waste prevention also has strong relevance in other complimentary policy areas such as the
‘green economy’, ‘innovation for sustainability’ and indeed the ‘circular economy’.
11 UNEP (2012d). Listed in Annex A, Chapter 1, Precursors of the GWMO. Sustainable consumption and production is also covered in Topic sheet 3, found after Chapter 2.
Figure 2.1 Moving from waste management to resource management within a circular economy Where we are coming from: The linear economy and waste management
Waste disposal Natural resources
Take Make Discard
Where we need to get to: Resource management within a circular economy
Farming/collection1
Biochemical feedstock Restoration
Biogas
Anaerobic digestion/
composting
Extraction of biochemical feedstock2
Cascades
Collection
Energy recovery
Leakage to be minimised Parts manufacturer
Product manufacturer
Service provider
Landfill Collection
User Biosphere
Mining/materials manufacturing Increasingly powered
by renewable energy
Technical cycles
Recycle
Refurbish/
remanufacture Reuse/redistribute Maintenance
6 2803 0006 9
Consumer Biological cycles
CIRCULAR ECONOMY - an industrial system that is restorative by design
Circular economy – an industrial system that is restorative by design
Source: Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2013)(http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/circular-economy/interactive-system-diagram).
Note: Both parts of this Figure are a simplification. Waste is generated at all steps in the life-cycle of materials and products, in procuring the raw materials through agriculture or mining, manufacturing the materials and the products, and distribution and retail, not just when the consumer discards a product at end-of-life. In the circular economy, these wastes from each step can also enter numerous feedback loops, or be utilized for energy recovery, or go to landfill. Each step in the life-cycle also generates other residuals, including emissions to air and water. Air pollution control and wastewater treatment concentrate these contaminants into additional waste. The energy recovery step could also be represented with a number of additional feedback loops, as both recovered energy and potentially recycled metals and ash are fed back into the system.12 To show all of this detail would be to make for a rather complex graphic.
The ‘feedback loops’ depicted in Figure 2.1 indicate that recycling and recovery are also firmly within the scope of the GWMO. So the GWMO considers not only what is commonly called the ‘waste management sector’, but also the recycling or secondary raw materials industry (the industrial value chain) and also the agricultural value chain. It is clearly important for national and international legislation to differentiate between wastes for disposal and materials for recycling and recovery, and indeed between ‘wastes’ and ‘non-wastes’; for the GWMO, all of these distinctions are covered in the discussions.
12 A recent variant elaborating on the energy recovery step has been developed. See ISWA (2015a) listed in Annex A, Chapter 4, Sustainability.
Background, definitions, concepts and indicators 25 2.2.3 Coverage of the GWMO
A life-cycle approach
The GWMO needs to look at the waste arising throughout the entire life-cycle of materials and products (Figure 2.1). These include mining and quarrying (extraction); agriculture and forestry; industry (materials, parts and product manufacturing); construction and demolition; commerce and institutions (distribution and services); and consumption (households).
Focusing on ‘higher-risk’ wastes
However, ‘waste management’ as it currently exists has taken a pragmatic approach, having in fact tackled some of the ‘higher risk’ waste first.13 The criteria for selecting the waste to be treated include proximity to people and the characteristics of the waste. It was public health concerns that resulted in municipal solid waste (MSW) in urban areas being controlled during the 19th century. Then, when environmental controls were first introduced in the 1970s, these included not only MSW but also commercial and industrial (C&I) and construction and demolition (C&D) wastes. Specific additional controls were focused on hazardous waste, due to its higher risks.
Responsibility for the environmentally sound management of waste belongs with the waste generator. The necessity to maintain public health in cities led to city authorities being given legal responsibility for the safe collection and disposal of MSW. As a consequence of this, the city auhority becomes in effect a ‘proxy- generator’. While the definition of MSW varies widely between countries, household wastes are always included, as are some C&I and C&D wastes from smaller businesses and institutions. In principle, C&I and C&D wastes from larger waste generators remain the direct responsibility of the waste generator, rather than passing on to the city authorities. However, these distinctions are often ‘fuzzy’ in developing country cities - by default, the city often manages all the waste generated in the municipal area, including C&I and C&D. The integrated nature of the management of these ‘urban’ wastes is further highlighted by the fact that for the physical management of their waste, both cities and business waste generators rely on ‘the waste industry’ - which depending on the country may be mainly private sector or part public and part private; moreover, it may be mainly ‘formal sector’ or part formal and part informal.
So while the GWMO may have its main focus on MSW and on hazardous waste, it is necessary also to include both general C&I and C&D waste firmly within the scope. Similarly, both the public and private, and formal and informal sectors, are within its scope.
A number of more specific waste types are also highlighted at specific points in the GWMO, particularly using Topic Sheets, Case Studies and Boxes. Examples include food waste and e-waste, which may arise at many different stages of the life-cycle, and so need more focused attention, and also disaster waste and marine litter.
Agricultural and forestry, and mining and quarrying (extraction) residues and wastes
All this leaves two very large sources of waste. Traditionally most agricultural and forestry residues and wastes (crop residues, animal faeces and urine, wood residues and waste) have been managed by the farmers and forestry managers as part of the agricultural value chain and the nutrient cycle. With the intensification of agriculture, the question of whether or not to include such materials in national waste control regimes has become a higher profile issue as increasing quantities of crop residues are finding an alternative use as biomass for energy generation. A substantial portion of mining and quarrying residues and waste are surplus rock or over-burden, which are high volume, low risk materials that are of necessity managed by the mining companies as near as possible to the point of generation. Again here, such materials have often been outside of national waste control regimes. A major exception is mine tailings - which are arguably not an ‘extraction’
waste but rather an industrial waste from the processing of ore in order to concentrate the metals. In order to keep the GWMO manageable, we have followed most national waste legislation and left the bulk of agriculture and forestry and mining and quarrying residues and wastes aside for this first edition.
The Outlook does draw attention to mine tailings and recommends a follow-up study specifically on that topic. It also recommends that the subsequent Regional Outlooks revisit their scope to determine the appropriate priority for such wastes in each region.
13 The drivers and history of waste management are expanded on in the next section.
2.2.4 Geograhical scope
The GWMO focuses primarily on policy planning at the national level, but in order to do so, it addresses waste management at local (city), regional and national levels. Most waste is generated in or near cities, and public health and environmental risks are greater when in proximity to people, so for MSW at least, it makes sense to focus first on cities. Many high-income countries have already gradually extended MSW management to rural areas, but for most developing countries this remains a long-term aspiration rather than a short-term priority.
Internationally, the GWMO aims to be relevant to all countries, whatever the income-level, in all the major world regions and in the context of different climates and local geographies. Clearly, the level of detail cannot be great – hence the need for follow-up Regional Outlooks and for specific Topic Sheets, Case Studies and Boxes to draw attention to examples of more specific issues (e.g. small island developing states [SIDS]). A number of global issues are also highlighted, incuding global markets for secondary raw materials, global trafficking of waste and marine litter.
A summary of the scope of the GWMO is provided in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1 The scope of the GWMO – setting the ‘system boundary’
NO. CATEGORY MAIN FOCUS WITHIN THE GWMO ALSO CONSIDERED OUTSIDE THE SCOPE
1. Receiving