FROM WASTE TO RESOURCE PRODUCTIVITY

ASSIGNMENT

YUNESHWARAN 1103142027
MUNIANDY
SAGEVINDREN MARIAPPAN 1103142031

Introduction
 Waste is an unavoidable outcome of all human activity, and a world without waste is impossible.
Furthermore, the transition to global, dense and urban living has increased waste output and complicated
our understanding of waste and its management. This has implications. While reuse, recycling and
resource recovery can delay when materials or objects become waste, there comes a point when limits are
reached. The value in most stuff is eventually exhausted, be that materially or financially. There is no
infinite materials loop, where all waste becomes resource. In other cases, the monetary or energy cost of
transforming a given material ceases to make financial sense. Yet, because waste is produced by human
activity, there are choices. What becomes waste is not inevitable, nor will the volume of material
classified as waste necessarily continue to rise. Rather, precisely because it is societies, cultures and
economies that make wastes, we can change what we do to be less wasteful: in other words, to be more
resource efficient. To do this requires everything from thinking about the kind of political economy we
want, recognizing we cannot avoid being part of a global material economy, to technical and legal
decisions about collection technologies and commercial regulation. Our choices are therefore political,
economic and structural; consumer ‘choice’ is minimal compared with these. Further, an over-emphasis
on thinking about closed systems, resource efficiency and waste can mask harder political choices such as
feeding hungry people with surplus food rather than turning it into energy feedstock, biofuel and fertilizer.

City waste system

1. Waste in a city
 Waste management in cities is a partnership between the city and its citizens, which depends
on issues such as ownership and responsibility, and hence citizen attitudes and behaviors. System
maps are helpful in highlighting the dependencies between waste and other city systems, such as
energy and water. Understanding the consequences of these relationships can reveal
opportunities for beneficial economic, social and environmental change, avoid ‘silo thinking’ and
help to engineer successful waste systems
It is helpful to consider all of the processes associated with waste as a system, which allows
us to create system maps and identify the influences on this system. The waste system is one of a
number of city systems, most of which are interdependent to a lesser or greater degree. The
waste system will have common components in different cities, but each city exists in a unique
context, having developed as a result of different local histories and geographies, and these local
contexts will be reflected in the waste system for any particular city.
2. City waste categorization
The most obvious relevant to city is the household and municipal include the waste
arising from gardens, parks and green infrastructure maintenance, or ‘green waste’); industrial
and commercial; and construction and demolition. However, the other two sectors agricultural
waste, and mining and resource extraction also have strong links to city life.
Waste can be classified in many other ways by physical state (solid, liquid, gas); and then within
solid waste by original use (packaging waste, food waste etc); by material (glass, paper etc); by
physical properties (combustible, compostable, recyclable); by origin (domestic, commercial,
agricultural, industrial); or by safety level (hazardous, nonhazardous).
3. City waste dependencies
A systems view of waste, which makes clear the dependencies and interdependencies
with all other city systems, enables rigorous analyses of the beneficial synergies and adverse
consequences of taking actions on waste in cities. A MSW system map can take different forms,
each illustrating different features of MSW management and the opportunities that are afforded.
A dependency diagram for MSW provides a graphic illustration of exactly how complex the
waste system is, and how difficult it is to design and manage effectively

Interdependencies between waste and other city systems

1. Infrastructure interdependencies
 The interdependencies within a systems view of waste depend on key elements that
include inputs, outputs, functions, controls and mechanisms. Inputs are consumed in the
execution of a function, such as managing solid waste. This function often depends on four core
infrastructure systems: energy and water, which usually act as inputs; and transport and
communication, which act as facilitating mechanisms.
Other features of the system, such as maintenance schedules and operating rules, control
how the function operates. In general, a dependency exists between two parts of the system if an
output from one forms an input to the other. Figure 1 shows two examples of these
interdependencies – using MSW to generate energy, and as a feedstock for metal recycling – but
a full system map might show dozens of such relationships, including glass, paper, packaging,
and so on.

Figure 1: Examples of solid waste management interdependencies.

CONCLUSION
 While pioneering work has been undertaken locally and nationally in the UK, there are
lessons to be learnt from overseas practices. Britain has a proven track record of innovation, and
perhaps it should now utilize the advances that the Fourth Industrial Revolution offers. There is a
need for all businesses to adopt a long-term strategy for maximizing resource utility, in whatever
part of the production and distribution system they function. Local communities and their elected
leaders and municipal managers can improve both the local environment and resource recovery
by empowering their citizens to manage their wastes more effectively. Regarding waste as a
resource stream that can generate new business opportunities and create jobs will make the UK
economy more resilient in the testing times that lie ahead.