You Have the Power to Change Recycling for Good and Achieve Zero Waste
hello everybody
i’m alders hicks and i’m here to talk
about recycling
and how you and i have the power to
change recycling for good
what do i know i was a mechanical
engineer
and then a developer of small business
software
about 27 years ago i was struggling with
the data corruption
problem in the office later that night
when i was putting out my recycling
and waste bins as you do they’re staring
me in the face
was a used material corruption problem
you mix up different items all together
at the beginning
whether it is data or used materials
then they are hellishly difficult to
separate later on
in essence the items immediately lose
their value
and become well a load of rubbish a
month or so later i had written down
a used material in and
a valuable product out solution for my
home recycling bin
since my light bulb moment i’ve spent
part of my life
working out how to implement the
recycling solution
together we can recycle most of what we
use and so decrease the toll we humans
are taking on our planet over the last
27 years
there have been many setbacks many false
storms
many tests are my resilience hence this
talk
but today i’m very very optimistic
because i know we hold the power to
change the recycling world for good
starting right in our kitchens
so let me ask you if you recycle at home
of course you do like so many of us we
all dutifully collect our recyclables
perhaps you even wash them before
placing them
out on the street to be collected and
recycled
you’ve done your bit you have that
nagging fear that much
of your effort will go straight to
landfill
what can you do it’s out of our control
i’m here to show while we humans create
waste we also have the power to create a
means of truly recycling
our used materials by harnessing skills
and behaviors
we already use in our homes what
behaviours
well let me ask you what do you do with
your clothes at night
my guess is you put them in the laundry
basket but would you then say
you have done the washing
likewise when you clear away the dishes
after a meal
does stacking them by the sink mean
you have done the washing up
both the laundry and the washing up
require more than simply collecting
our clothes and our dishes
so let me ask you again when you put
your used containers into your recycling
bin
have you done the recycling the answer
is
no we have simply gathered these
valuable materials together
but there are still many steps before we
can say we have
recycled them
so what happens to these containers and
packaging items
once we have dutifully collected them
we’ve all heard of the horror stories of
mountains of recycling
ending up in landfill or the oceans
but trying to nail down the figures as
to just how much is actually recycled
is no easy task
most governments will proudly report
their domestic
recycling percentages
for example from the uk statistics on
waste in 2019
the uk claims 45 percent
both australia and the us claim lower
percentage figures
these percentages sound okay but drill
down
and you will see that figures are based
on tonnages of the domestic waste stream
collected
or recovered for recycling
not the amounts that are actually
recycled
it gets more complicated there’s
confusion about what recycling
actually means in many cases
recycling refers to down cycling
where for example a glass bottle ends up
as road base
or a soft drink container becomes a
garment or trainer’s
this is better than used material ending
up or going straight to landfill
it is just kicking the can down the road
it achieves very little environmental
benefit and it still requires sourcing
the virgin raw materials to meet the
ever increasing
demand for more and more packaging
sadly very little of what we diligently
collect
is closed loop recycled
that is when a used material can be
remade into another product
of similar value for example where there
is plastic
where a plastic soft drink bottle is
closed loop recycled
back into another soft drink bottle
please would you know two acronyms that
i use in this talk for different
plastics
the first one is pet which is
this material here the other one is hdpe
which is the plastic which makes up this
container here
the american chemistry association said
in a report in 2018
that the us pet that’s these guys
the uspt recycling rate in the united
states is 29
however in the us napcor 2017 rate
report
it said that the closed loop pet
recycling rate is just
six percent yes you all heard correctly
just six percent note the difference 29
recycled drops down to six percent
closely recycled
so why is it so vital to closely recycle
these beautiful materials
turning this used clear glass bottle
i mean back to a new clear glass bottle
means big savings in carbon emissions
mining and raw materials extraction
required for packaging
emit substantial amount of greenhouse
gases
but closed loop recycling means the
requirement for mining and extraction of
raw materials
is dramatically reduced if we closely
recycle these used materials we can
realize their true
environmental and cash value
this cash value is the real incentive
that will keep these used materials out
of landfill
and the oceans so
unlike down cycling which simply delays
the inevitable
trip to the tip close-knit recycling is
both environmentally
and financially beneficial and it is
self-sustaining
but what does this mean when it comes to
the recycling
we so carefully collect in our homes
we do not know the actual recycling
percentage achieved
for the used materials placed into our
recycling bins
whatever it is it a very much lower
percentage
is closed loop recycled
what we refer to as doing the recycling
is actually just
collecting these valuable materials
turning
and turning most of them into waste
that is a shocking situation for a
service we pay good money for
though how many of us actually know how
much
of our taxes go towards this failing
system
currently domestic recycling services do
not deliver
and that is a disaster for us and our
planet
so why are we letting so many valuable
materials go to waste
because most materials collected by the
current domestic
recycling systems become mixed up
and contaminated
despite decades of research and
development
by many clever people the world over
billions of our tax dollars spent on
infrastructure
and educating us the most advanced
domestic recycling systems in the
western world
today cannot cost effectively reduce
contamination to levels low
enough so that the recycled materials
created
sell for more than they cost
sell for more than they cost so long as
we continue mixing
these valuable materials together it is
simply not economically viable to
separate them
and the state otherwise is greenwash
how do we create a source of materials
free of contaminants
and pure enough to close the recycle
millions of households are already
practicing
the exact steps we need to take for
example
we use our washing machines to clean our
clothes
so we can reuse them over and over again
clearly we already harnessed technology
to process our household items so why
not
a domestic recycling appliance applies
that does the same for our used
materials
a machine that keeps these valuable
materials separate and pure
a machine that process them so they are
washed
dried size reduced and then stored
neatly until they can be collected and
used to create new items
what would a domestic recycling
appliance look like
and how will it work the domestic
recycling appliances in the middle
on the left hand side is a refrigerator
and the right hand side is a dishwasher
when you want to load the recycling
appliance you simply open the drawer
place the container close
the door the appliance will now send to
check
that item no confusion
about whether or not that item is
recyclable
or not if it is it’ll be returned to you
and you can dispose of it in your
rubbish bin
if it’s recyclable the appliance will
then wash
dry glass will be crushed these guys
here will be crushed
the metals here will be shredded and the
plastics will be flaked
for example when i take this bottle
this pet bottle has been flaked down
to these these are flakes which have
come from an exact same replica bottle
of that one
no education is required there’s no
confusion
the news materials will be processed in
separate streams to valuable products
let me just take these again
this bottle has some value
these flakes have a lot of value
there will be seven separately stored
products in one of seven containers
one each for pet plastics that’s these
guys one each
for hdpe three colors of glass green
clear brown
steel
and aluminium cans this photograph is of
the appliance product storage container
in the prototype currently being
developed
note the individual small containers
when one of those individual containers
is full you will pull out the storage
container
wheel it to the agreed collection point
outside your home
just like you wheel your suitcase to a
waiting taxi
a mobile app think uber will alert a
collection vehicle
which will come and empty the storage
container and weigh your products
recording the reduction in environmental
footprint you are accruing
and in the future but potentially
rewarding you with cash
for your efforts the products will be
delivered directly
to the manufacturing plants for
processing into new items
at home they’ll be big savings in time
no more putting out the recycling bin
weekly or fortnightly 50 times or 26
times a year
instead there will be between three and
eight collections per year
depending on how quickly you in fill up
the individual containers
there’ll be no smell no mess just a
clean
tidy hygienic and efficient storage
place for all those used containers
the appliance will save the recycling
hero in your house
time and energy or they might be heroes
and will make everyone in the house
feel good how soon will this technology
be available
in our homes our estimate suggests
you’ll be able to buy one in the us in
the first quarter of 2023
how much will it cost we think it’s
going to be between
3 500 and 4 000 us dollars
and that might sound a lot but consider
when domestic recycling refrigerators
first came into the u.s market 100 years
ago
in 1919 people paid
the then equivalent price of an average
new motor car
or over 11 000 us dollars in today’s
money
for their first fridge just over 30
years later
nearly 90 percent of homes had
refrigerators
will you receive a cash return yes but
not initially
additionally the sensors in the
appliance will process the return of
cash deposits
on qualifying use containers in those
jurisdictions
where governments have legislated bottle
deposit return schemes
so should we wait for governments or the
recycling industry to help us
produce such an appliance please ask
yourself this
do we need governments to help us
purchase or use a washing machine or a
dishwasher
we know what the answer is no we do not
just like we take responsibility for
washing and reusing our clothes
so we can take responsibility for
recycling our used containers
this appliance will mean you and i
can stop our used containers ending up
in landfills or oceans
together we can change recycling for
good
the future of recycling is simple it’s
as simple
as washing your clothes in a washing
machine
thank you very much