The shift in perceptions that transforms “waste” into resources is accelerating, driven by the great rise in the value of stuff previously considered worthless. This revolution of thought will be accompanied and enabled by many smaller changes, some of which are already beginning to take shape. Some will be subtle alterations of mindset, but others will be very visible – including, I think, a transformation in the processes and equipment involved in waste collection. Soon we will start to see what the real resource economy of the future is going to look like, and what sort of waste industry it will need.
I became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) in the late 1960s, long before the word “logistics” first appeared in its name. Since then I have spent a good deal of my career working to develop aspects of the system that maintains the flow of materials that feeds our economic engine. I held roles that altered the handling and processing systems in sectors as diverse as industrial gases, welding, parcels and palletised systems hire. What was once “just” transport, getting goods from A to B, has been transformed into the sophisticated logistical operation we see in the supply chain today. But I now see these supply chain developments as a prelude to tackling, and potentially integrating with, the one logistics sector the modern CILT has hitherto consistently ignored – that of waste.
Big business
What goes in must come out, and the 30 million tonnes of food and drink consumed in the UK each year results in an extraordinary 15 million tonnes of waste, taking account all stages of the supply chain after the food has left the farm. Then there is the immense diversity of non food goods passing through retail sites, everything from arc lamps to zed beds, which amounts to a further 30 million tonnes each year. The purchase of these items yields packaging waste and often results in the displacement of old, worn out or simply redundant items the purchaser already owns.
The Rolonoff goes into battle – but its days may be numbered. Photo by Macspite, via Flickr.
All this waste is managed by a sector that employs only around 40,000 people. It uses perhaps 8,000 trucks for household waste and a similar number for the commercial and industrial streams. Compared with the inbound supply chain, the waste industry manages to transport material far more compactly. There is no need to package waste so as to protect it – the more you can squeeze into a big rolonoff skip or compact into an RCV the better; and there hasn’t been the sort of delivery time pressure that modern “Just In Time” logistics places on the inbound stream. Waste isn’t about to go off, and (incineration aside) there was no burning need for it to be at a certain place at a certain time. About the only limitations on the efficiency of waste transportation have been the legal constraints on where bulking and dumping can happen.
Irresistible logistics
All that is now changing. A triple whammy of high landfill taxes, rising energy costs and booming commodity prices has sudden started to make waste interesting. By 2020 the waste sector will need – and be able to afford – the same levels of sophistication related to tracking, quality control and management which have flowered in the food industry and relegated the days when supermarket car parks were full of delivery artics rather than customers’ cars into the distant past. Waste is becoming valuable, and recyclates a critical part of the supply of raw materials. But will it be the traditional waste sector that responds to the demand for this new type of service, or will innovation come from elsewhere?
The early signs of interest in waste amongst logistics companies are there. Already it is an opportunity to make additional use of some of their existing infrastructure…. Supermarket waste now goes back to regional distribution centres in the empty delivery trucks, rather than being collected in waste sector compactors. Eddie Stobart now shifts sizeable tonnages of chipped clean wood for energy.
It was the idea of the distribution centre that led to the rationalisation of supply logistics – and I would suggest that integrated resource recovery centres will be part of the future for waste management, playing the same role in driving efficiency and timeliness in the waste sector. Parcel companies and Ocado-type online ordering systems are potentially a pipeline to the valuable packaging and other wastes currently thrown in the bin or recycled at home, and harnessing their delivery network to collect clean, dry high quality card and plastic could radically alter the domestic waste market.
Waste needs to be seen as a 60 million tonne logistics challenge, with the aim being to get the right material to the right location at the right time. Diversion from landfill will in future not only be about separating waste and getting material to where it can be reprocessed. The concept of waste itself is being reinvented, so that material may increasingly avoid the traditional waste sector altogether. If this trend becomes established, in the future waste will reach its end destinations by an entirely different transportation mode – the days of the skip may be numbered. And if the waste sector isn’t sharp in responding to change, the nascent business of resource recovery logistics may well also be run by an entirely different set of corporate entities.
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