4 Your Career, Our Future Waste: tomorrow’s resource


In a linear (“take-make-waste”) economy, waste can be grouped in a number of different ways. Household waste, for example, can be grouped into five types: liquid, solid, organic, recyclable, and hazardous (4 Waste Removals 2016). Even if these different types of waste can be disposed of in different ways, we should not be focusing on waste disposal (which often means bringing it to a landfill). Instead, we need to be aware of the resources used to make each item and the fact it is being turned into waste. In a circular economy, waste becomes a raw material for another process. Using resources efficiently across the whole life cycle of a product, from extraction, processing of raw materials, manufacturing and distribution to final disposal, will be very important for reaching sustainable development and a green and circular economy. The “Mind Your Step” resource footprint report (Friends of the Earth 2015) found that land and water use could be reduced a lot by taking into account in the way that different products are made. This research showed that producing a typical pair of leather boots and an average smartphone used


163


25,000 litres and nearly 13,000 litres of water each (Figure 4.6 and Figure 4.7). Because of the large quantity of things produced globally each year, there are some very important jobs in the fields of circular design (see Section 4.2.1”) and waste management.


While repurposing and recycling are two ways to reuse things that might otherwise be thrown out, our goal should be stop the need to reuse things altogether. In the meantime, one example of successful reuse is the Trashpresso machine, a “portable recycling plant” (Nuñez 2018). In addition, some young entrepreneurs in Indonesia have turned “waste into a business”. Several waste recycling initiatives by smart entrepreneurs are also described in Box 4.7.


Cutting food waste and loss (Box 4.8) will also help increase the amount of food for people to eat without using more resources. It will also reduce the need for new land to grow more food and reduce the amount of “virtual water” used in farming – a trifecta of positive results!


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