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| Keiran Whitaker, the chief executive of Entocycle, which takes so-called pre-consumer local food waste and feeds it to fly larvae, which eats the waste and converts it to protein. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times |
The issue has gained some acceptance, whether in the form of plastic straw bans or anxiety about e-commerce-related cardboard piling up.
But experts say these aren’t necessarily the biggest problems. Reducing the damage from waste might require expanding the traditional definition of waste — not just as old-fashioned garbage, but as a result of wild inefficiency in all kinds of systems, which often results in emissions of greenhouse gases, among other problems.
Companies and organizations around the world are taking on the challenge. Some are using materials traditionally considered waste and making them into something entirely new — and often unrelated — to their original purpose.
Others are avoiding the creation of waste through greater efficiency and new technologies. Here are three examples of efforts underway:
Entocycle
A British company trying to revolutionize the animal feed industry
When Keiran Whitaker was working as a scuba diving instructor, witnessing the destruction of tropical rain forests, often because of industrial food production, he decided he needed to put his environmental design degree to good use.
“We’re obliterating our natural ecosystems predominantly to produce monocrops that go into the industrial food web, and what’s bad on land is even worse underwater,” he said, referring to the destruction of rain forests and the bleaching of coral reefs.
According to a 2013 study from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, just under 40 percent of global crop calories are used to feed animals, most of them from corn and soybeans grown at an industrial scale. It’s a particularly inefficient way to feed people: It takes about 100 calories of grain to produce just three calories’ worth of beef, or 12 of chicken.
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| Counting dead Black Soldier flies, and flies in an atmosphere and light controlled room where they will produce eggs. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times |
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| Part of the Entocycle team at work in one of its labs, and flour made from its dried larvae. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times |
He said that about 97 percent of the insects are then ground into a flour high in amino acids, which, combined with other ingredients, can be made into feed pellets for animals. The flies’ excrement, known as frass, can be used as crop fertilizer. Eventually, the insect flour could be directly consumed by people. (While that might make some people cringe, Mr. Whitaker said he’s not “grossed out” by the insects.)
Timothy G. Benton, a professor at the University of Leeds, who is focused on food security and sustainability, said he doubted that a company like Entocycle could do enough to transform the food system.
But Mr. Whitaker, the chief executive, is more hopeful. If his model takes off (it currently is not producing at scale), more land could be used to feed people, and fewer forests would be razed for cropland or pasture; fertilizer production, responsible for 1 percent to 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report from the Australian government, would be avoided, as would the nutrient pollution created from runoff. Enormous quantities of wild fish are also used to make animal feed, so this could also help ease global overfishing.
“How do you produce enough food to feed the world, and how do you produce a safe environment for us to live in?” Mr. Whitaker said. “They seem to be mutually exclusive, but they have to be fundamentally tied together.”
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| Dried Black Soldier fly larvae. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times |
A company in Finland that produces clothing fiber from plants
According to its government, Finland’s forests have about 10 trees for every person in the world. It is perhaps not surprising then that a company aiming to reinvent the way we make clothing from wood is Finnish.
The second and third most common textile fibers are already made from plants — cotton and viscose rayon.
Most viscose rayon is made from wood pulp, but the process of making it typically uses so many chemicals in such vast quantities that some experts said it shouldn’t really count as a natural plant fiber.
Additionally, traditional rayon production has been linked to harmful forestry practices. The Rainforest Action Network has found that about 120 million trees from existing forests are cut down for textiles every year.
Enter Spinnova, a Finnish textile fiber company founded by two former physicists, Janne Poranen and Juha Salmela, who used to work in pulp and paper development and research at Finland’s national research center.
After learning how spiders make silk, Mr. Salmela wondered if it might be possible to spin plant fiber in the same way.
It is. Spinnova uses a mechanical method to produce fiber, currently in a pilot stage. Their process uses about 99 percent less water than cotton production (one study showed that about 2,900 gallons of water can be produced to make a pair of jeans), without any harmful chemicals.
They use wood pulp harvested from Brazilian wood, in partnership with Suzano, one of the world’s largest paper pulp producers and one of Spinnova’s shareholders. The forestry practices and the wood pulp produced are certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council. This has a climate benefit as well because forests (especially well-managed ones) absorb much of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Spinnova plans to eventually use agricultural waste material and discarded clothing to produce fibers.
Lenzing, a manufacturer of wood-based textile fibers that uses a closed-loop chemical production process, is one of Spinnova’s shareholders. Spinnova has also received support from Marimekko, a Finnish retailer.
“Sustainability is our main driver,” Mr. Poranen said. “For me, it has been extremely important that you don’t have to think why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s totally new and totally sustainable for the whole globe.”
Tokyo 2020
The Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo
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| Paralympic torches to be used in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games. They are 30 percent recycled aluminum. Credit Koji Sasahara/Associated Press |
It’s the result of the disposal of vast — and growing — amounts of appliances and gadgetry, including cellphones, computers and TVs, which can leak dangerous chemicals into the environment.
The Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games thought it could bring attention to the problem by making the medals for next year’s games — about 500 — from metals retrieved from donated e-waste.
At sites in more than 1,500 of Japan’s municipalities and about 2,400 NTT Docomo electronics stores, over 47,000 tons of discarded electronics were collected, including more than five million cellphones, according to Masa Takaya, a spokesman for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
By June 2018, the organizers had already collected enough bronze; by October 2018, they had more than 93 percent of the gold and 85 percent of the silver, he said, adding that the organizing committee anticipates that it will be able to make all of the medals from the donated items.
Recovering these metals also avoids additional mining, which is environmentally destructive and energy intensive.
The recycling industry, in which people break apart devices and remove copper, gold and other materials, has negative health consequences, according to the Lancet, and toxic chemicals from improper disposal can also get into the environment, causing pollution. And the problem could get worse. About a third of the global population was expected to have an internet-connected phone by 2017, according to a report from eMarketer. In the United States, the typical home has 65 electronic appliances, according to a study from Natural Resources Defense Council.
This initiative will not solve the e-waste crisis — that will likely come from governments and electronic companies, said Vanessa Gray, an official at the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency specializing in information and communications technology. But she said attention to the issue is important, because many people don’t know even what e-waste is and why it matters.
“Just for that, the Olympics story is really good,” she said. “In the end, it shows that the way we do things at the moment has terrible consequences for society, in terms of the negative health impacts and obviously impacts to climate change.
“It’s time for a system update.”
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