Closing the loop in island recycling; zero waste for one planet living.

We live in an urban-industrial ecosystem, which is characterised by a linear flow of resources; extraction, use, disposal. This applies to our remote islands as it does for our cities; we are largely dependent on fossil fuels for our power and an ever increasing flow of industrially produced items off the ferry. Globally, the environment has largely been regarded as a source of raw materials and a repository for our waste. The resulting pollution has traditionally been addressed by mitigation; taller chimneys, longer sewage outflow pipes, location of industry away from residential areas. The health of this urban-industrial ecosystem is often measured in the quantity of materials that we consume (e.g. gross domestic product). We are demanding more of our planet than ever before. Globally our ecological footprint is now more than three planets, but in many parts of Western Europe and North America it is over five planets.

If we are to achieve sustainable one planet living without a drastic reduction to our standard and quality of life, there must be a paradigm shift in the way we approach resources and the environment. One approach, known as industrial ecology is modelled on the natural environment. In natural ecosystems resource movements are complex but typically circular. Waste is an anathema. Discarded material becomes the food or homes of other inhabitants of the ecosystem. Nutrients flow between various pools but are never permanently depleted. A balance is maintained which supports life, indeed maximises life, without detriment to other ecosystems of the planet as a whole.

The application of ecological principles to urban-industrial systems involves a similar approach to the resources flowing through our communities. Waste must be designed out of the system. Reuse and recycling must be maximised, and the reuse and reprocessing must happen locally. Items difficult to recycle should be designed out of the system (for example real nappies replacing disposable nappies). This approach, known as ‘zero waste’, developed in the Japanese automobile industry in the 1990s. To reduce costs and improve reliability, existing norms of redundancy and failure were no longer accepted. 100% of components were required to be fit for use, and all excess materials were expected to be recycled. Car manufacturers prided themselves on the minimal waste involved in producing a car (sometimes as low as 16kg). Of-course the motivation was not primarily environmental, but largely financial; wasted resources means return on investment has not been maximised. In the current decade, zero waste has become the mantra of community recycling and latterly has been accepted by the Scottish government as an ultimate aim for our society. The obective must be to send nothing at all to landfill sites. In the view of Community Recycling Network for Scotland, that includes the ash that remains in incinerators and energy from waste plants, which can be 25% of the original volume of material inputted.

To meet the challenge of 'one planet living', we must redesign our resource management systems to 'close the loop' of resource consumption. In most areas of Europe transport costs are still relatively low, and in a free market economy the economically logical action is often still to dispose of waste rather than seek reuse or recycling options. The likely outcome is not to not a closed loop but a linear flow of resources ending in a landfill site. Islands are different. Intra- and inter-island transport costs are significantly higher than on continental landmasses. The economically logical approach here is to seek to find a use for all ‘waste’. Since all waste has a use or potential use, proponents of the zero waste hypothesis argue that we should use the term ‘resources’ and not ‘waste’. Once we adopt this change of diction, the option of burying resources in the ground, or even worse paying for them to be shipped to the mainland to be land filled, becomes an irrational course of action.  It is therefore likely that the world's first zero waste communities will be islands.

To achieve closed loop recycling there must be a paradigm shift in how we view waste and approach resource management. We must question why it is that organics such as food and garden waste, which can easily be managed within the home or business environment, are routinely collected and transported off-island whilst compost and other soil enhancers are transported the other way. We must seek to reuse items that are not at the end of their useful lives, such as furniture, carpets, building materials, bicycles, books and toys. We must find cost effective ways of reprocessing dry recyclates on island. We will need to use traditional island-living attributes of self reliance and ingenuity to design new products and processes; crockery and glass crushed to form drainage material, tyres packed with earth used to build walls; cardboard compressed into kindling, paper shredded for animal bedding, bottles transformed into tumblers.

This new paradigm will require vision. We should not expect it to be delivered by local authorities, which are risk averse and tend to prioritise the needs of core rather than peripheral communities, or by the private sector, which requires short-term returns on investment. The vehicle for this new future is social enterprise, because it provides the freedom and flexibility to redesign the future, can innovate in a financially low risk environment and gives islanders a reason to 'go the extra mile' and a develop stake in their own future.

The first steps towards zero waste islands have already been taken. In the Orkney, Shetland and Argyll Islands, community organisations reprocess used vegetable oil into diesel. This relatively simple action prevents a hazardous (or ‘special’ in Scottish terminology) waste being transported to the mainland for eventual landfilling, reduces fuel poverty in the islands, provides much needed employment and reduces reliance on transnational corporations. This is one small way for communities to regain their independence whilst also reducing their carbon footprint.

The reprocessing of resources into new products often relies on economies of scale which island communities find difficult to achieve. For example, as all school children now know, glass should be collected for recycling, in which it is melted down for manufacture of new glass vessels and containers. However the only such plant in Scotland is in Alloa. The carbon benefits of transporting glass from a remote island to the Scottish mainland and onward, inevitably by road, to central Scotland is questionable. This course of action may improve our recycling rate but probably dos little for our quest of one planet living. Innovative organisations are required, such as Enviroglass (a trading arm of the Shetland Amenity Trust), which handles all of Shetland’s glass collected by the local authority, some 700 tonnes per annum. This is reprocessed into a variety of products; shot blast for local industry, decorative gravel for landscaping and as an aggregate replacement in the production of decorative pathing slabs and other building materials. This latter use is a high value product, with a greater profit per tonne of material processed, with the result that economies of scale can be achieved with smaller tonnages such as will be collected in island settings. Again there are spin off benefits, with local employment and the reduced requirement for quarrying sand and gravel.

The concept of zero waste, is not just about wasted resources, it applies also to wasted lives. Recycling social enterprises are frequently just as interested in providing training and employment opportunities as solving a waste stream issue. For the past two years Cothrom in South Uist has operated the ‘ReStore’ furniture repair workshop. This provides a refurbishment and repair service for households and businesses in the Uists and Barra. With the closure of the local landfill site, this furniture would otherwise be shipped across the Sound of Harris to be eventually landfilled near Stornoway. The ReStore service not only prevents this needless waste of resources but also provides work-based training for six people at any one time, and a steady supply of quality used furniture, on an island with only one other furniture retailer.

Scottish island communities have taken the first tentative steps towards closing the loop for a sustainable future. There is much more work to be done and more innovation required. There are some obvious places to start; at least one Scottish island ships significant quantities of pallets back to the mainland at great expense, whilst also importing chipped pallets as animal bedding. Community composting should be the default option for green waste generated by islands. Schools and other municipal institutions should be required to use the proven technology of small-scale in-vessel composting units to handle their food waste on site. All these technologies are likely to have attractive pay-back periods, particularly on the majority of Scotland’s 44 inhabited island that do not have operational landfill sites. Other challenges will require more ingenuity and determination; plastic reprocessing operations can only currently be done viably at a scale that would seem to preclude on-island reprocessing. However there is the potential to innovate, by for example, shredding the plastic for use as an insulation material.

The realisation of a zero waste island will bring with it jobs, training and a significant boost to the local economic multiplier. Just as resources are maintained on island so is the associated commerce. The alternative does not bear comparison. As landfill sites reach capacity and others are closed prematurely by increasingly stringent environmental legislation, waste will be required to be transported further. Already, following the closure of the Portree landfill site, all of Skye’s residual waste is being trucked to the central belt for landfilling. If rising transport costs, the landfill tax escalator and limited capacity of ferry services are factored in, then the current ‘linear model’ of resource movement becomes facile.

The progression to closed loop recycling systems will require community-based action. Whilst legislative and fiscal tools deployed by government can create a helpful climate for localised reuse and recycling, communities have a vested interest to see that it becomes a reality on their own island. One planet living is attainable if we as communities are willing to take responsibility for our resources. In so doing we will also be taking responsibility for the social and economic prosperity of our communities.