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Global Networks Working Together

Jeff Cooper, president of the International Solid Waste Association, outlines international efforts to drive resource efficiency following a recent meeting in Paris.

There are several cities which host international organisations, including Paris that has both the OECD and major technical branches of the United Nations Environment Programme. Representatives of the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), headquartered in Vienna, went to meet policy officers responsible for waste and resource management policy development in both organisations in early February to examine further opportunities for joint initiatives to ensure resource efficiency. Early in December we hosted the third meeting of the Global Waste Management Partnership in order to look at ways in which we can contribute to helping with the 6 programmes that fall under the remit of the GPWM.

Meeting with the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development

Jeff Cooper, President of the International Waste Association (ISWA) and Antonis Mavropoulos, Chair of ISWAs Scientific and Technical Committee, met with three representatives of the OECDs Environment and Economy Integration Division of the Environment Directorate at the OECDs headquarters in the west of Paris.

ISWA president Jeff Cooper
ISWA president Jeff Cooper

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has 34 member countries, predominantly those most highly developed economically and with a predominantly capitalist economic structure, reflecting the time when the OECD was originally formed 50 years ago. The OECD therefore does not include in its membership China, India, Indonesia, Brazil or Russia, although the last is an accession country for OECD membership.

However, the OECD links in closely with many other countries, including those just noted, with specific projects on environmental issues.

The most appropriate link point for ISWA within the OECD is its Working Party (WP) on Resource Productivity and Waste which is one of 6 WPs under the UNEP Environment and Economy portfolio of the OECD. This WP includes international organisations, such as an industry organisation, trades union representation and an environmental organisation, the EEB (European Environmental Bureau). The WP meets every 9 months and works on a biannual programme of work and the OECD are currently preparing the programme of work and budgetary provision for the next programme for 2013/14. There are several contenders for new work, including: economic instruments, labelling and other information schemes for consumers and extended producer responsibility. The OECD was the pioneer of EPR in the late 1980s.

One of the current foci of interest under the existing programme is the safe management of waste from the nano-technology sector. 13 materials are being manufactured for use as nano-materials, including several used in cosmetic products. Currently the OECD is also focusing on sustainable materials management with practical guidance being developed on critical metals in mobile phones and perhaps in future for construction materials.

One aspect of interest to the OECD given its international perspective is the life spans of materials when there are incentive schemes for recovery which are not comprehensive geographically. This means that products and materials which ought to be reclaimed within the economically developed states leak out to developing countries where they may not be treated or reprocessed to recover materials so effectively.

There is an OECD project on sustainable materials and greenhouse gas mitigation methodology nearly ready for use whereby a scheme for accounting of GHG emissions linked to materials management can be evaluated.

Jeff Cooper explained the structure and organisation details of ISWA while Antonis Mavropoulos outlined the main work streams that ISWA is working on, including: the ISWA Knowledge Base, the Globalisation Task Force and the climate change and waste management working groups main activities.

For the future there could be joint working on projects and the possibility of joint publication along the lines of the arrangement with the IWA (International Water Association). There is an excellent portfolio of publications available from the OECD bookshop in Paris but a good proportion of the most important are available through downloading on the website.

UNEP

While the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is based in Nairobi, Kenya it has a number of outposts covering every continent, including Paris. Jeff Cooper and Maarten Goorhuis, the chair of the ISWA WG on Recycling and Waste Minimisation, met with three members of the UNEP staff who are in the UNEPs Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch in the section dealing with Harmful Substances and Hazardous Waste.

ISWA is collaborating with UNEP in the Global Waste Partnership by taking on the responsibility for the climate change and waste management topic, one of six that are in the programme, the others being managed through UNEP and other UN organisations, as detailed in the separate section below. Guido Sonnemann of UNEP applauded the work of ISWA in Durban in December 2011 to produce a final document with the agreement of the UNFCCC that acknowledged the waste sectors capacity to tackle the GHG emission problem.

There are 46 UNEP cleaner production centres throughout the World whose emphasis is on the broad range of practices which can reduce the environmental impact of industrial production but as a result there will be considerable resource benefits. However, funding devoted by UNEP to the wider chemicals and waste sector is declining compared to other priorities for UNEP. Therefore, it will be more difficult for ISWA and other organisations to access even joint funding of projects or other initiatives on resource efficiency and all aspects of wastes management.

“The work on solving the e-waste problem is receiving more resource and has made greater progress than the other programmes partly because it has been the focus of attention and of greater concern than the other programme areas.”

Jeff Cooper, ISWA

There is a UNEP cities unit focussing on resource efficiency. In addition, the metals focus, always for UNEP one of their main concerns, due to the potential of heavy metal contamination, currently is tackling electronic waste from a materials flow perspective and UNEP is linked in with the UN University (UNU) with regard with electronics equipment re-use.

Sonia Valdivia outlined two of the current projects being funded by UNEP: e-waste and a food packaging food project. The e-waste project is one of those under the Global Waste Management Partnership and brings together the Basle Convention Secretariat, UNIDO, the UNU and the ITC arm of UNEP. The food packaging project follows on from UNEPs interest in reducing food waste throughout the distribution chain from agricultural production to the ultimate consumer.

Guido Sonnemann suggested that there would be the possibility of providing a joint production of a publication based on the ISWA Policy paper on Waste Minimisation, Recycling and Resource Management. This joint publication would require the provision of an updated ISWA paper, which is being worked on by the WGRWM and due to be finalised immediately after the ISWA Beacon Conference on Waste Prevention to be held in Vienna 31 May/1 June 2012, at which both the OECD and UNEP will be presenting on their new work undertaken in the last year. For the publication UNEP would provide added value to the ISWA policy paper through the appointment of a consultant in order to provide non-developed economy perspectives to the paper.

The UNEP Global Waste Management Partnership

The GPWM was set up in November 2010 at a meeting in Osaka, Japan attended by the newly elected Vice-president of ISWA David Newman. It brings together a number of partners working together on a number of globally significant problems to enhance waste management in specific topic areas. These issues are important in the context of bigger UN objectives such as the UNs Millennium Development Goals and Climate Change

There are six elements to the GPWM:

  • Integrated solid waste management (ISWM) UNEP International Environmental Technology Centre
  • Solving the e-Waste problem (StEP) with UNIDO in the lead
  • Waste agricultural biomass (for energy production) UNEP leading
  • Climate Change and Waste Management – ISWA
  • Marine litter (plastics in ocean gyres) UNEP
  • Waste prevention – UNEP

With all the programmes there are extensive links with other international organisations, some have links with national governments and in some cases with NGOs.

There are already a number of small initiatives in the area of enhanced WEEE management focusing on developing countries, mainly in the past attempting to curb the amounts of WEEE ending up in countries unable to handle it properly. The Basle Convention Secretariat has been a key player in trying to ensure that developed economies stop the export of WEEE to countries unable to handle it and because much WEEE is hazardous the Basle Convention can place pressure on those countries to fulfil their obligations under the Convention and the parallel EU legislation which governs hazardous waste movements from the UK. Through capacity building in the developing countries they also have tried to establish more robust systems for the acceptance of second-hand EEE in developing countries and more specifically to ensure exclusion of WEEE.

In discussions in early December under the auspices of GPWM hosted by ISWA at our offices in Vienna the issue of where we go in the future with WEEE in developing economies included the possibility of importing items that required repair and refurbishment. There is eminent logic in doing this given the disparity of costs of labour in the developing counties compared to the exporting countries. However, for the regulators there are already some difficulties in their distinguishing between second-hand EEE exports and WEEE.

The work on solving the e-waste problem is receiving more resource and has made greater progress than the other programmes partly because it has been the focus of attention and of greater concern than the other programme areas.

The work on waste agricultural biomass focuses on converting this resource into energy sources. While there are existing projects converting either agricultural wastes or non-edible agricultural products into energy or fuels the further potential is huge particularly because a recent FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) report noted the amounts of food lost post-harvesting.

The marine litter strategy focuses especially on plastics in the sea with an emphasis mainly on prevention, given the problems of trying to recover plastics from the oceans. There is a recently completed EU LIFE-funded project to recover discarded fishing gear from the seas around Europe with nylon fishing lines and nets being the primary target given the potential value of this material. However, while this issue is of great concern to the fishing industry because of its disruptive and destructive effects the development of the ocean gyres of ever diminishing sized pieces of plastics waste poses a very different problem ingestion by wildlife and fish stocks which may ultimately enter the human food chain.

The work on waste minimisation by UNEP IETC has only just started with some possibility of building on outputs from UNEPs long-term work on clean development. ISWA will provide assistance both through access to the ISWA Knowledge Base but also through our further work on the policy paper on Waste Minimisation, Recycling and Resource Management. At the initial meeting of the GPWM in Osaka ISWA had volunteered to take the lead on this issue but subsequently it was thought better for ISWA to lead on the waste and climate change programme given the amount of work that ISWA had already undertaken and had scheduled for the future.

In future the work of all these international bodies will focus on resource efficiency in its myriad forms from initial waste prevention measures, enhancing recovery and recycling and ensuring productive use of the few remaining waste fractions.

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