Treasuring Trash

The Global Economic Storm has catapulted the Green movement to the forefront, as eco-solutions promise relief from its effects. A unique enterprise has emerged. Mimicking a modified “Smokey Mountain” business model, entrepreneurs worldwide are combing through garbage, looking for gold in trash.

Recycling has taken a new visage as environmental savior, and livelihood creator.

Golden Rule: Save

Its golden philosophy is simple: with oil reaching new price highs ($117 per barrel at this writing), recycled products promise energy and fiscal conservation.

For example, recycled paper consumes 60% less energy, and 61% less water. For every ton produced, 3 oil barrels are conserved. Recycled steel saves 40% water, 1.5T of iron ore, uses 60% less energy. Plastics need 70% less energy and 90% less water. Substitution is another type of “recycling.” A 1930's concept, Chemurgy, is being revitalized, using agricultural and bio-produce for everyday and industrial items, from fertilizers, pesticides, to plastics; further conserving oil.

Garbage Out, Cash In

Garbage conversion has been paying off. A US recycling facility, Casella Waste Systems, earns US$150/bale each (about 326.6 kg) of tin cans. US$40/ bale for mixed paper, and US$900/bale for aluminum cans. Another firm, Coskata, produces and sells garbage-sourced ethanol.

Big brands are also recycling: Coca-cola, whose bottles currently use 10% recycled plastic, invested $44M in a recycling plant last year, to produce near-100% recycled bottles by 2010. Online by 2009, the plant aims to produce 100M pounds of recycled plastic annually, eliminating 1M metric tons (MT) of CO2 in ten years. They are even earning from branded “green” merchandise.

Marginalized Bangladeshi families earn a livelihood from collecting polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. Ground into flakes, factories export them to China, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. They are turned into polyester staple fibers (PST) – comforter, and cushion stuffing. About 20,000T of PET flakes were exported from over 3,000 Bangladeshi community-based “factories” last year earning US$10M. The business grows about 20% annually.

Ironically, China, unfairly painted as bogeyman causing the world's current demand woes, is an initiator. In 2005 it imported all kinds of recycled trash, re-utilizing 4.96M tons of plastic, 17.0M tons of paper, 10.14M tons of steel, 4.82M tons of copper, and 1.69M tons of aluminum.

Jobs In Streets

With open dumping comprising 75% of our disposal means, the need for proper waste management emerges. This will lessen health risks, boost urban development, promote energy conservation, and create jobs with businesses focused on recycling.

Biodegradable organic waste – or “putrescibles” – is 54% of Philippine trash. With rising LPG prices, coupled with once beautiful areas like the Pasig, and its organic waste lined riverbeds, the need for communal tanks with biodigesters – specialized bacteria that consume waste in water – emerges. Further, they release biogas, becoming on-site electricity generators that replace thousands of liters of fuel oil. Cash-rich Metro Manila cities can empower poorer areas with this biofuel technology and gain from carbon credits (plus votes). Schools are a good starting ground. Already, a foresighted “Green” entrepreneur invested millions of US dollars for the first Philippine power plant in Rizal, literally running on garbage.

The Administration is perceptive of recycling’s financial and environmental benefits. Its recently launched Zero Basura Olympics, mandates LGUs to be 100% waste-independent in 10 months, either through proper disposal or recycling. The Quezon City local government has already responded, by banning plastic bags from all business establishments in the city.

The large companies are not yet chiming in. They should follow SM Prime Holdings and Ayala Malls, who buy your paper and electronic waste, when oil was at US$40/bbl. Entrepreneurs could buy this “trash” from Ayala and SM, segregate it, and then export to Vietnam, Taiwan, or Korea.

In urban centers, small businesses, local governments, and plush subdivisions can upgrade garbage segregation, and include innovative community-based rainwater collection and recycling systems. Entrepreneur-created recycling initiatives inevitably bring livelihood. Bella Clemente and Judith Pustrado sell school bags made entirely of old billboards and political banners. Employing women from depressed areas, the operation pays Php17 for each bag. Averaging Php300 each, the Enterprise earned over Php1.35M in 2007.

The resulting “green-ness” – the emissions reduction - can contribute to Philippine carbon credits. The amended 2008 Kyoto protocol identifies under-quota carbon emitting countries, earning credits per unutilized carbon unit, and selling them to over-quota emitting countries. Each unit, typically measured in carbon dioxide equivalent (or tCO2e) is generally convertible to US$4-10 per MT of greenhouse gas emissions. The price however is subject to supply and demand, and will go up as Global Warming effects become more acute. The World Bank valuates the total 2007 Carbon Trading Market size at US$64 billion.

Crisis forges human innovation, and the current Global Storm is waking us from our imported oil-dependence complacency, making us realize that the world’s oil resources are finite, and highly vulnerable to manipulations. With quick alternatives, especially for our transport sector, we can avoid the wage-price inflation spiral.

That cash can come from trash illustrates that the other key to solutions is our one infinite resource: ingenuity.

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