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Zero to hero

In a world of constrained resources, one person's waste is another's billion-dollar idea.

Lezette Engelbrecht
By Lezette Engelbrecht, ITWeb online features editor
Johannesburg, 03 Jul 2012

As you read this, the rumour mill is buzzing with possible iPhone 5 release dates, even though the 4S was unveiled a mere eight months ago. Its predecessor, the iPhone 4, appeared just over a year before that. It's but one example of the dizzying rate at which new technology is coming onto the market, while last season's gadgets are relegated to a growing pile of e-waste.

It's also a pattern being repeated across consumer goods verticals, from food to fashion, with products being churned out at high speed and consumed just as rapidly. Long gone are the days when households used to keep appliances for decades - things are built for desirability, not durability, and a major component of creating desire is novelty. Practically the second you've bought the latest must-have item there is a newer, better version on the market, or changes in technology render your existing system obsolete. Call us the disposable generation.

Many of the biggest benefits come as a result of getting down to the absolute minimum.

Lezette Engelbrecht, online features editor, ITWeb

Consequently, the world is fast running out of space to store the endless piles of stuff we no longer want or need. The average South African produces 255kg of waste a year, meaning a typical family is contributing around a ton of garbage every 12 months. Multiply that by millions of families and you begin seeing the size of the problem. Imagine the effects in places like the US, where the average person throws out 726kg worth of trash each year. Given the exploding global population and ever-increasing stream of goods being produced, it's obvious this situation isn't sustainable.

The coupling of these concerns with a growing focus on climate change and limited natural resources is driving momentum behind innovations in the re-use and recycling space. Waste may bring serious problems, but it also offers serious prospects for solving more than just waste-related issues. Recovering materials, rethinking design and reinventing processes in an effort to tackle trash can have significant knock-on effects in terms of saving costs and energy. These solutions form part of what futurist Patrick Dixon calls a 40 trillion-dollar opportunity, as the green tech revolution transforms the way business operates. Somewhat counter-intuitively, many of the biggest benefits come as a result of getting down to the absolute minimum, right the way down to point zero.

Closing the loop

In conventional terms, zero is not a particularly aspirational number, especially in today's “gimme more” culture. But it has become the new buzzword in environmental circles, as the concepts of zero emissions, zero toxics and zero waste become central to the conversation around climate change and sustainability.

Rather than seeing zero waste as an unrealistic ideal, major corporates are integrating the idea into their sustainability strategies, and finding it's not only feasible, but profitable too. Already, big names like Nike, Toyota and Walmart have announced targets for zero waste, along with Epson, HP, Toshiba and others, who are using this goal to push the envelope in terms of innovation.

The premise is pretty simple; ensure all product waste is re-used, from origin all the way to endpoint. The execution, however, proves a little more complicated. It requires rethinking everything from product design and raw material use to manufacturing processes, procurement, packaging, distribution, delivery and customer relations. What it also means, however, is discovering inefficiencies that would otherwise have lingered for years, as well as opportunities to streamline systems for an altogether lighter, leaner enterprise.

Essentially, the zero waste philosophy takes a leaf out of nature's book, instigating processes that see an expired product serve as raw material for the creation of another. Think of how natural “dustbins” like forest floors, soil beds and bacteria turn spent resources into new organisms. This approach challenges traditional notions of value, and like the zero symbol itself, transforms a product's linear life cycle to a closed, circular one. It becomes about extracting value from waste, so nothing is really wasted at all.

As Walmart CEO Lee Scott said in a speech announcing the company's new direction in 2005: “If we throw it away, we had to buy it first. So we pay twice: once to get it, once to have it taken away. What if we reverse that cycle? What if our suppliers send us less, and everything they send us has value as a recycled product? No waste and we get paid instead.”

Ripple effect

One of the most promising features of the zero waste approach is its potential to solve many issues with one solution. Waste-to-energy projects, for example, use something we want less of (landfill waste) to provide something that's greatly in demand: sustainable energy. Many novel applications are now emerging, such as generating electricity from waste water, turning organic waste into fuel for cars and employing newer technologies such as pyrolysis and gasification.

In the same vein, companies are finding ways to multiply the outcomes of their zero waste strategies, so they're effectively making cash from trash. Nike, for example, collects people's worn-out trainers and shreds them along with other manufacturing scrap to create something called Nike Grind. This material is then used in everything from sports courts to the soles of new shoes to zippers on athletic jackets. Once reviled for its sweat-shop practices, Nike made a complete turnaround a few years back, and now its goals include zero waste, zero toxics, and 100% recovered product by 2020.

The company realised the impact constrained natural resources would have on its consumers and business, and restructured its operations accordingly, coming up with ingenious new ways of doing what they've been doing for years. This includes designing footwear that's both a hit with athletes and transforms the manufacturing process, such as their Flyknit trainer, a 160g shoe that uses less material, cuts labour costs and reduces production time.

In 1997, Nike adopted the “Natural Step” philosophy to focus on sustainable product design and operational efficiencies. Six years later, shoebox redesign had reduced packaging weight by 10%, saving 4 000 tons of raw materials, and $1.6 million annually. Other innovations include using water-based cements in 90% of Nike shoes, saving the company from using millions of litres in solvents and generating savings in water disposal and hazardous material handling.

Similar examples can be found in looking at the zero waste policies of many other companies. Major public and private entities have also gotten involved, one example being the “Beyond Waste” challenge organised by US non-profit Launch. It's partnering with none other than NASA, the US Department of State and the US Agency for International Development to identify 10 “game-changing” innovations in areas of zero waste design, waste elimination, waste transformation, and waste mitigation technologies.

Instead of a cash prize, the 10 winners will get a chance to engage with some of the world's brightest business and government leaders, to bring their ideas to life.

Underpinning all these initiatives is a willingness to reconsider our assumptions about the “inevitability” of waste, and to explore how we really can do more with less. It involves changing mindsets, so finding a solution to a problem becomes an engine for advances we never dreamed possible. Waste may traditionally be one of the less sexy green topics, but it's rapidly gaining interest on all fronts, as the world begins rethinking the way it views production, consumption and the many layers in between.

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