Partner Article

Ten key concepts about waste management

Waste isn’t useless. It can be a valuable resource - but that message needs careful promotion, backed up by both policy and practice.
‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’ – known as the ‘Three Rs’ – is the ‘waste hierarchy’. This classifies waste management strategies according to their desirability in terms of waste minimisation. It aims to get the maximum practical benefits from products and generate the minimum amount of waste. Ideally, we shouldn’t generate waste. If that’s not possible, then waste should be reduced – perhaps by recycling or material recovery. Only once all these options have been exhausted, should waste materials be disposed of.
Each stage in a product’s life-cycle – design, manufacture, distribution, use, reuse, recovery, recycling and disposal - offers opportunities for waste management policy intervention (to rethink the need for the product, to redesign to minimise waste potential and extend its use).
Sustainability depends on resource efficiency. Waste management is essential because, globally, we’re extracting more resources to produce goods than the planet can replenish. Unless we manage the waste we have – reducing, recycling and reusing wherever possible – humanity’s continued economic growth and development can’t be assured.
Effective and efficient waste management brings social benefits by reducing the waste’s adverse impact on health.
Effective and efficient waste management brings environmental benefits such as improved air and water quality, as well as reductions in ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions.
Effective and efficient waste management brings economic benefits. Recycling can result in creating efficient processes to recover valuable materials and reuse them – helping to create jobs and new business opportunities.
Effective and efficient waste management brings ‘inter-generational equity’ – in other words, it helps to pass to future generations a cleaner environment, along with a more robust economy with, thus, more jobs and opportunities.
It seems only fair that polluters pay for the impact they’re having on the environment. This ‘polluter pays principle’ means that waste generators should pay for the appropriate disposal of their waste material.
Waste King endorses all of these concepts – and does all that it can to uphold them. However, it also does all it can – via reducing, reusing and recycling their waste – to keep costs to its customers to a minimum.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Glenn Currie .