This book provides important perspectives that we must incorporate in assessing and evaluating various recycling schemes. The main question raised is whether "dirty MRFs" (Materials Recovery Facilities that sort out recyclable material from either single stream waste, or heavily contaminated recyclables) are the way forward. It is often advocated that recycling schemes incorporating dirty MRFs, which do not rely on individual households to voluntarily separate recyclable from non-recyclable material when putting out there garbage, result in reduced collection costs, at the same time as allowing a larger volume to be recycled. I have always had an uneasy feeling with proposals of "dirty MRF" schemes. Intuitively, it is easier to recycle if materials were separated from the beginning, and the task of sorting recyclables doesn't appear pleasant in the presence of a large amount of non-recyclable waste mixed in. This book provided me with a more grounded argument to support my intuition.
However, as the title suggests, there is also another important issue addressed in this book, namely the potential of urban recycling to provide "sustainable community development". The authors define sustainable community development as balancing the "three E's" - economic vitality, environmental protection, and social equity. In many cases, the 3Es are prioritised precisely in the order above, and not well balanced. The authors attempt to illustrate that "dirty MRF" schemes can in fact be detrimental to social equity and also that their claimed function for environmental protection is questionable.
Interestingly, the text is organised in a way that continues to foster optimism in the reader while proceeding with substantial criticism. In the first sections the authors discuss least desirable waste systems, before gradually moving onto current alternatives. All the case studies are from the Chicago area of the US. First to be investigated is the case of the City of Chicago (chapter 3), that has implemented the "blue bag" scheme from December 1995. Residents put recyclable items in a blue bag, it is then collected in a vehicle together with non-recyclables, and delivered to an MRF. On the vehicle, bags get compressed and they break. By the time the load arrived at the MRF, there is a messy mix of recyclables and rubbish. Although this may not be a standard example, the study depicts the essential characteristics of a "dirty MRF" scheme. Working conditions are bad, and workers' health and safety are often threatened by hazardous contaminants (e.g., medical waste). The scheme also involved practices that are detrimental to community development. For example, workers are hired only under short-term basis with no security or benefits. I have not seen many works investigating the working conditions in dirty MRFs. In this book, these are revealed through interviews with the workers.
In chapter 4, smaller scale "community based" recycling schemes that preceded the city-wide "blue bag" scheme are described. These are basically scavenger supporting schemes, operating buyback centres and setting up collection routes within several neighbourhoods. The authors demonstrate that these were more desirable in terms of social equity. Those involved in running the schemes are aware of the problems in the community and acted to create social change. With the demand and pressure to handle an increasing amount of recyclables, and also with the drop in secondary resources market, these kinds of schemes are inevitably facing difficulties. In Chicago, they could not compete against the proposal of the "blue-bag" scheme. This probably indicates a possibility of "division of labour" in urban recycling. Community based schemes can focus on items with potentially higher added value, such as furniture and bicycles (as briefly mentioned in the chapter), while mass-recycling schemes take care of items with low unit value.
Recycling zones and parks are discussed in chapter 5. These are based on the idea of "industrial ecology". Waste from one factory is raw material for another. The basic concept has gained high profile through "zero-emission" advocates. Several local blueprints for recycling zones and parks were put forward in towns in the Chicago area. In spite of this, not many plans are put into practice. The reasons are explored.
Coming back to household waste, the case study of Evanston, Illinois is presented in Chapter 6. The Evanston programme, described as an example of recycling / social linkage programs, is depicted as taking the middle ground between Chicago's Blue bag scheme and the earlier community based ones. By making separate collections for paper and for other recyclables, combined with a job retraining program, Evanston's recycling scheme appears to have successfully satisfied the "Three Es" to some extent. To the authors' despair, this scheme was being abolished as they wrote, in 1998. The city authority made a decision to cut costs by letting the scheme be taken over by a fully private operator, without the social linkage component. In the subsequent chapters the authors point out that this cost calculation did not take into account the benefits accrued outside the recycling department, and advocate the need of "shadow pricing", a method to assess costs and benefits across agencies.
In their analysis of the case studies, it can be noticed that the authors hold strong criticisms of the organisation "Keep America Beautiful". Similar organisations exist in other countries as well, like the Tidy Britain Group and the Clean Japan Center. These organisations are partially funded by the packaging industry, and the authors claim that their tacit aim is to sustain and increase the use of disposable packaging. In the concluding chapter, our authors suggest that "the environmental community has been misled and co-opted by groups such as Keep Evanston Beautiful (KEB)" (A local branch of Keep America Beautiful). On the other hand, elsewhere in the text it is mentioned that the co-ordinator of the praised Evanston programme was previously the executive director of KEB. It might have been argued that KEB provided this key-person with the opportunity to gain the expertise needed to run the Evanston programme. Perhaps if it had not been for KEB there would have been no Evanston programme. The authors make a rather cautious and partial consideration of the value of less radical organisations such as KEB, or Keep America Beautiful.
What this book suggests is that recycling schemes need to be well designed in order to contribute to sustainable community development. One aspect to consider is the mobilisation of the informal sector. City administrators may favour a scheme that runs entirely in the formal sector, but it is a fact that a significant amount of recycling activities take place in the informal sector, as seen in the case of pre-"blue bag" Chicago. As indicated by the authors, schemes that support informal sector activities can generate benefits to the community as well as achieving recycling targets. This may be applicable and even more relevant in the context of cities in developing countries, where the informal sector is playing a major role in urban recycling.
Another issue we need to take into account is the negative aspects of "dirty MRFs". Although here we have to note that there is no dirty /clean dichotomy in MRFs. It is more of a spectrum. The "dirtiest" of all is "Single Stream" recycling, where all mixed rubbish goes to a MRF. The next dirtiest may be "dual stream" - one collection for unrecyclable waste and another for commingled recyclables. The Chicago "Blue bag" scheme lies somewhere between the above two. Commingled recyclables is cleaner than single stream, but still many recycling experts see this too as still essentially "dirty". Evanston goes one step further to separate paper from other recyclables. An extreme case of source separation can be seen in the scheme currently in operation in Hekinan City in Japan, where householders are required to sort and place waste and recyclables in 22 separate categories. The basic idea here is that collected recyclables can directly go to the reprocessors without the need of an MRF at all. While this has its virtues, it can be costly in terms of collection and in terms of the education and persuasion required to attain the extensive co-operation of householders. Discussion about how to identify the appropriate level of source separation by households, remains necessary.
© Kohei Watanabe [ kw10004@cantab.net]