‘Micro’ Recycling: Recovery of Materials at a Hyper Localised Level

To elicit behaviour change, start small. That is the consensus of psychological studies and one that author James Clear states in his book ‘Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results’.

‘All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger,’ he writes.

Behaviour change is also essential in addressing our growing waste problem. The ever-increasing expansion of our urban environment has brought a deluge of pollution and waste, bolstered by an economic system that rewards consumption.

This growth also eats away at our finite resources with economists’ calls growing increasingly louder to create systems that capture these valuable items.

Could another ‘small’ solution then be the answer to address these intertwined crises?

By Daniel Vlahek

Waste Management - Effective or Wishful Thinking?

Around 2.24 billion tonnes of waste is what is (conservatively) estimated to be generated each year.

Without urgent action in reducing and recovering waste, we could see levels rise as high as 70 per cent as outlined by the World Bank’s report ‘What A Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2025’.

The UN’s Environmental Programme (UNEP) also outlines the critical nature of managing and reducing current waste as well.

‘Waste aggravates the climate crisis, waste aggravates nature and biodiversity loss…and waste disproportionately affects the poor.’

Sadly, the current waste management industry does little to reduce waste; present economic policy maintains an environment where it is actually cheaper to send waste to landfill than to recover or repurpose.

But like a plugged bathtub that is filling constantly with water, it will eventually spill – the same can also be said for our growing landfills.

Although existing in concept since the 1960s from economists such as Walter Stahel and David Pearce, the Circular Economy (CE) model has been in recent times galvanised by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation as a direct response to both the slow depletion of scarce natural resources and expanding waste streams through unabashed, wasteful economics.

Still, the concept of CE is slow moving. The recent ‘Circular Economy Gap Report’ illustrates that whilst awareness of circularity has increased threefold, circularity itself has actually decreased from 9.1% in 2018 to 7.2% in 2023.

So how do we support a greater push towards improved material circulation?

Ace in the Hole? Micro Hubs to the (Resource) Rescue

“Microfactories are ultimately about creating value from waste…Waste is really just another material that is a resource that is waiting to be harnessed” says Veena Sahajwalla, founder of UNSW SMaRT Centre.

Indeed, microfactories and its adjacent circular hub entities showcase what decentralised, local models of production can do to retain resources (materials, knowledge and capital).

In Chicago, Bubbly Dynamics brought to life an old USDA factory, repurposing it to create a research and production facility for food-based enterprises known as ‘The Plant’.

Showcasing industrial reuse to the community, projects at The Plant aim to economise “waste” – from aquaponics that utilises fish waste to grow plants (and vice versa), to investigating the effects of fungi in breaking down sustainable packaging.

Nestled in inner city Melbourne, a pop-up showcasing the development of a local circular economy is also taking shape.

‘Space of Waste’ presents a site that empowers experimentation where contributors work collaboratively in reducing carbon emissions within their local neighbourhood, sharing knowledge and most importantly, waste, to inspire and educate their local community.

And across the globe in the Netherlands, a ‘cleantech playground’ has emerged from the remains of a derelict shipyard. De Cuevel is another living example of decentralised resource recovery.

“We designed a lot of the technologies that we use right now in a time when there were infinite resources available…in the last 50 years it has become really clear that is not the case, we don’t have infinite resources and we have to use them intelligently” explains Eva Gladek from Metabolic.

These CE and recycling models showcase how decentralised hubs have their part to play in the wider waste management system, presenting workable examples on what our economy could look like at a macro scale.

Can We Recycle/Circularise Our Problems Away?

Is recycling the silver bullet to addressing our waste management issues? Not quite.

Like any concept or process, they all have their limitations. The law of thermodynamics – the scientific laws that define physical quantities of energy, temperature and entropy in thermodynamic systems – illustrates that recycling continuously and endlessly has its thresholds.

Perpetual recycling as such is a myth, and one that has to be taken into consideration Recycling also validates waste production – the more we recycle, the more resources are extracted and consumed.

It also puts a spanner in the works for CE practices as well. Governed by the principles of closed loops where materials and items can be repaired, repurposed, or remanufactured, the quality cannot be fully recovered without using more ‘energy’.

Now that’s not to say we abandon recycling or implement a circular economy altogether – they all form part of several tools to use in addressing waste and its tied sustainable development issues.

This is where circular and recycling hubs like ‘Space of Waste’, SMaRT at UNSW, and De Ceuvel can truly shine – through behavioural change at a localised level.

And how may this look exactly? Altering consumption patterns and perceptions on ‘waste’ One of the elephants in the room to solving our waste problems lies in addressing our rampant consumption/throwaway culture.

As Leyla Acarolgu succinctly puts it: ‘We have essentially designed ourselves into a disposable society’.

Through circular hubs, we can begin to see ‘waste’ more intimately and begin to nurture better behavioural approaches towards consumption or disposability (that is, refuse, rethink, reduce).

Even if we take small actions every day, these acts will foster the emergence of a new social norm, one that will ultimately lead to broader systemic change.