Zero Waste by Robin Murray, Greenpeace Environmental Trust 2002

containers, and residuals. What matters is that the streams
remain separate to avoid contamination.
In respect to the fourth stream, bulky waste, it is primarily
handled throughout Europe, North America and
Australasia via a small number of designated bring sites,
often at landfills, supported by doorstep collections for
those without cars or who live in rural areas. Recycling is
relatively straightforward in this case, with residents and
traders instructed to source-separate their waste and place
it in the relevant containers. As a result, diversion rates of
60-70% can be rapidly achieved, provided that the layout
of the sites is re-organised and sufficient green collar staff
employed.
The problem with this system is that while it is cheap for
local authorities, it is a major generator of traffic
(accounting for nearly 1% of car traffic in outer London
for example). There is an environmental case for
introducing a more systematic doorstep collection scheme
for bulk goods, as well as extending take-back systems
through commercial delivery vehicles as producer
responsibility regulations come onstream.
In the USA and Canada bring sites of this kind have been
refashioned into recycling and reuse centres. They have
become transfer sites for the recycling of consumer
durables, as well as places of recreation – a market for
reuse goods, an education centre and a waste museum.
The above four-stream system has been adopted for trade
and institutional waste as well as waste from households,
often using the same vehicles and facilities.
5. Mapping
Intensive recycling needs to give as much priority to
mapping its waste as the nineteenth century General Staff
in Prussia gave to mapping their territories. In the case of
waste, the primary mapping will have three main parts:
• an analysis of the composition of waste
• an identification of the main sources and quantities of
waste
• an audit of existing assets
(i) waste composition
In the era of mass waste, what mattered was not the
composition of waste but its volume and weight. Increased
awareness of pollution led to new classification of special
and hazardous wastes, but these mainly applied to
industries, not households. For the most part waste was
waste. The issue was quantity not quality.
Incinerators were a partial exception. They did have an
interest in the combustibility of their feedstock, and
undertook periodic studies to distinguish the main
elements of waste in relation to their calorific values. But
the studies remained aggregated, with categories such as
combustible and non-combustible, and with large residual
categories such as ‘miscellaneous’ and ‘fines’.
The starting point for Zero Waste has been
disaggregation. Sorting techniques have been developed
which can identify the composition of each of the waste
streams, as mineralogists identify their metals. It has been
found that an adequate analysis requires hand sorting. It
cannot be done satisfactorily by machines. Hand sorting
allows the breakdown of waste into fifty or more
components, and gives the planners of recycling direct
experience of the materials with which they are working.
Like opinion polling, waste composition sampling is done
regularly as a measure of progress and a guide to practice.
(ii) estimating quantities
In the past, mass waste has been measured at the point at
which it has to be paid for – at the point of transfer
and/or disposal (although in the UK as in other parts of
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