Waste Minimisation – Role of Public, Private and Community Sector

When it comes to waste minimisation and moving material up the waste hierarchy you will find partisan advocates for the roles of the public, private and community sectors. Each will tell you the reasons why their sector’s approach is the best. The private sector will extol their virtues as the only ones capable of efficiently and effectively doing the job.  They rightly note that they are the providers on the front lines who actually recover the vast majority of material, that the private sector approach drives innovation and efficiency, and that if waste minimisation is to be sustainable this must include economic sustainability.

 

The community sector on the other hand will make a strong case to say that their model, because it commonly encompasses social, environmental, and economic outcomes, is able to leverage value from recovered materials to dig deeper into the waste stream, to optimise recovered material quality, and to maximise employment and local economic benefit.

Before recycling and composting were economically viable prospects, community sector organisations led the way, developing many of the techniques now widely used. They remain the leaders in marginal areas such as furniture reuse, running projects that deliver environmental outcomes while providing wider community benefits such as rehabilitation and training for marginalised groups.

Finally, in the public sector corner, advocates will point out that the profit-driven private sector will only ever recover those materials that are able to generate positive revenues, and so cannot maximise waste minimisation, while social outcomes are strictly a secondary consideration. The community sector, on the other hand, while encompassing non-monetary values and capable of effective action on a local scale, is not set up to deliver these benefits on a larger scale and can sometimes struggle to deliver consistent, professional levels of service.

The public sector can point to government’s role in legislating to promote consistent environmental and social outcomes, while councils are major providers and commissioners of recycling services and instrumental in shaping public perceptions around waste issues. The public sector often leads in directing activity towards non-monetary but otherwise valuable outcomes, and provides the framework and funding for equity of service levels.

So who is right? Each sector has good arguments in its favour, and each has its weaknesses. Does one approach carry the day?  Should we just mix and match according to our personal taste or based on what is convenient?

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Maybe the issue is not “which approach is better?” but instead “how might the different models help us get to where we ultimately want to go?”

Smells Like Waste Minimisation

So where do we want to go?  What is the waste minimisation end game?

If we think about things from a zero waste perspective, the ideal is that we should move from linear processes of extraction, processing, consumption and disposal, to cyclical processes that mimic nature and that re-integrate materials into economic and natural systems.  This is the nirvana – where nothing is ‘thrown away’ because everything has a further beneficial use.  In other words what we have is not waste but resources.  Or to put it another way – everything has value.

Assuming that we continue to operate in an essentially capitalist system, value has to be translated into economic terms.  Imagine if every single thing that we now discard was worth enough money to motivate its recovery.  We would throw nothing away: why would we if there was money to be made from it?

So in a zero waste nirvana the private sector and the community sector would take care of recovery almost automatically.  There might evolve a community and private sector mix, with each occupying different niches depending on desired local outcomes. There would be no need for the public sector to intervene to promote waste minimisation.  All it would need to do would be to set some ground rules and monitor the industry to ensure a level playing field and appropriate health and safety.

Sectoral Healing

Returning to reality, we are a long way from that zero waste nirvana.  As things stand, a bunch of materials do have economic value, and are widely recycled. Another layer of materials have marginal value, and the remainder have no value in practical terms (or even a negative value in the case of hazardous wastes).

The suggested shift in perspective is most obvious in terms of how we think about the role of the public sector. To bring us closer to our goal, the public sector needs to intervene in the market to support those materials of marginal value so that they join the group that has genuine value.

Kerbside (or curbside) collection of certain materials, such as glass and lower value plastics, is an example of an activity that is in effect subsidised by public money. These subsidies enable the private sector to achieve environmental outcomes that we deem sufficiently worthwhile to fund.

However, the public sector should not just be plugging a gap in the market (as it largely does now), but be working towards largely doing itself out of a job. If we are to progress towards a cyclical economy, the role of the public sector should not be to subsidise marginal materials in perpetuity, but to progressively move them from marginal to genuinely economic, so that they no longer require support.

At the same time new materials would be progressively targeted and brought through so that the range and quantity requiring disposal constantly shrinks.  This suggests a vital role for the public sector that encompasses research, funding for development of new technologies and processes, and setting appropriate policy and price structures (such as through taxes, levies, or product stewardship programmes).

Similarly, the community sector, because it is able to ‘dig deeper’ into the waste stream, has a unique and ongoing role to play in terms of being able to more effectively address those materials of marginal value as they begin to move up the hierarchy.  The community sector’s unique value is its ability to work at the frontiers.

Meanwhile, the private sector’s resources and creativity will be needed to enable efficient systems to be developed to manage collection, processing and recycling of materials that reach the threshold of economic viability – and to create new, more sustainable products that fit more readily into a waste minimising world.

In the end, then, perhaps the answer is to stop seeing the three models as being in competition. Instead, we should consciously be utilising the unique characteristics of each so that we can evolve our practices towards a future that is more functional and capable of delivering the circular economy that must eventuate if we are to sustain ourselves on this planet.

Note: The article is being republished with the kind permission of our collaborative partner Isonomia. The original article can be viewed at this link

Adoption of Cryptocurrency into World Markets and Role Played by Government Regulations

The adoption of digital currency is undoubtedly a topic worth ruminating upon. The technology took off like anything in the recent past leaving a lot of experts & speculators stunned with the unprecedented benefits that industries across the world yielded through it. The overall rate of growth is also dynamic which can be attributed to the fact that companies look forward to implementing the latest technologies that can entail significant innovations at thebitcoincode.io.

Reasons Why Popularity Of Bitcoin Is Getting On Its Peak

Has it all been hunky-dory since the beginning?

Bitcoin era brings you the latest trends that are reshaping the entire landscape of the financial systems in economies worldwide. A cryptocurrency is a form of blockchain technology that not only received significant acceptance from countries worldwide but also transformed the whole digital finance ecosystem. But was this as smooth & seamless in the beginning as it is now? Well, the answer to that is a “BIG NO”. The advent of cryptocurrency was met with substantial opposition from seasoned speculators, investors & economists. However, there were still some prominent proponents of cryptocurrency that never gave in to the naysayers and backed the crypto industry quite ardently.

Governments, on the other hand, couldn’t afford to let such an aerodynamic technology make inroads into their ecosystem since the technology was being considered highly disruptive. The incumbent financial system in place sensed the threat and tried to keep up with dynamic trends but it was quite too late. Users & participants had already begun to switch to digital currency systems as it entailed greater benefits than traditional methods could ever offer.

Why has crypto gained relevance over traditional means?

Needless to say that the adoption of cryptocurrency has skyrocketed in the last decade and continues to set an example for traditional systems in place. Emerging markets have already acknowledged the unfathomable potential of the crypto industry and countries like Kenya, Venezuela, Vietnam, Nigeria are witnessing a significant rise in the overall transactions being conducted on peer-to-peer platforms.

Another predominant reason for such a considerable surge in peer-to-peer transactions can be attributed to the fact crypto is a decentralized platform that can be accessed by anyone. People don’t need to have a designated bank account to be able to conduct the transactions. Hence, centralized exchanges are being overlooked for far better options and crypto is one such emerging example in such countries.

Ways that people adopt to circumvent restrictions

Emerging markets are bound to have currency devaluation which stimulates the citizens of the country to resort to ever-expanding peer-to-peer platforms. They can easily buy the cryptocurrency through such platforms which also enables them to keep their savings intact. In addition to this, international transactions can also be carried out easily in such areas which can vary in nature i.e., commercial use or individual remittances. For instance: purchase of products/goods so that they can be imported or sold later.

However, emerging markets also put a specific limit on the designated amount which can be moved out of the geographical boundaries of the country. Hence, this is where cryptocurrency comes in handy for people who want to move the larger sum of money out of the country by circumventing the imposed regulations. This method easily facilitates such people in meeting their respective financial needs quite seamlessly.

Peer-to-peer platforms are redefining the trends

China is one of the largest markets in the world that was recently ranked fourth in terms of cryptocurrency adoption globally. On the other hand, The United States of America was also featured in the list at 6th spot. Now, here’s the catch, the ranking witnessed a significant shuffle when USA’s rank went down to the 8th spot, while China’s rank slipped to the 13th spot.

10 Trending Crypto Exchanges

The main reason that can be attributed to such a great fall is their exclusive rankings in the volume of trade on peer-to-peer platforms. However, other countries are also catching up with the trends now and the sky is the limit for all adopters of the latest technology.

The regulations imposed by the government had to be complied with but they did not impact the proliferation of cryptocurrency under any circumstances.