Heike Zatterstrom explains how waste can be turned into energy - SEforALL Forum
[video:https://vimeo.com/283739156]
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Fashion: Part of the problem, therefore of the solution
The global fashion industry came to COP23 to tell of its efforts to cut out the waste and greenhouse gas emissions in its production, supply and customer behavior which have played a significant part in the linked problems of climate change and sustainability.
Watch how the fashion industry supports the Paris Agreement
The event at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference left the human models at home to shine a spotlight instead on business models and environmentally sound practices that can ensure the transition towards a cleaner, sustainable future, including making fibers from orange juice production.
The fashion sector represents an annual global turnover of around 160 billion euros. It produces 60 million tonnes of garments a year, which could reach 100 million by 2030, and employs 60 million people around the world, mainly in developing countries.
Photo Credit: UNFCCC
Moderating the event, Costa Rican fashion designer Mitchell de La O outlined efforts to design and promote a new low carbon and sustainable system for fashion production and consumption.
Brands are adopting various climate and sustainability approaches, including by measuring their climate impact and looking beyond the first tier of suppliers, integrating sustainability in core business practices, making efforts to bring transparency to the supply chain and applying a variety of innovative solutions.
Mitchell de La O, Costa Rican fashion designer
Swedish brand Filippa K’s sustainability expert Elin Larsson shared insights on how resource intensive garment making is. The production of 1 kilo of cotton requires 3,000 liters of water and 1 kilo of chemicals, creating 16 kilos of CO2 and half a kilo of waste. In Sweden, on average each person throws away 13 kilos of garments a year, of which 8 kilos ends up as waste – yet at least 60% could be reusable.
Vanessa Rothschild, the Sustainability Expert at the H&M Group, said the group’s strategy was to be 100% run on renewable energy by 2040 with an entirely circular production model, where the by-product of one industry serves the objective of another.
The panelists also discussed how industry players are developing and adopting new tools to lower the carbon footprint of the industry. For example, Filippa K has created a way to classify fiber for weaving according to a set sustainability degree (its biological/organic source, ability to be repaired and recycled or even being of a recycled nature already).
Orange Fiber’s innovation, developed in partnership with the Polytechnic University of Milan, uses by-products from citrus juice production to produce a sustainable textile. Enrica Arena, one of the two original entrepreneurs, works at the end of orange juice production to retrieve the waste of the chain, and extract from it the cellulose that helps to create the necessary textile fiber.
Filippa K said it was also essential to involve customers in campaigns. For example, Elin Larsson presented the “7 pieces is all you need” campaign, where 18 different looks were created from the same seven pieces to prevent over-consumption of their products.
Another campaign is to tell people there is no need to over-wash clothes, which quickly breaks down the fibers, as well as to remind them that clothes can be mended, instead of thrown away.
Banner and thumbnail photo credit to UNFCCC
The report entitled “Private Sector Participation of Solid Waste Management Activities in Ibadan” provides Oyo State Government with recommendations to improve the technical, legal and institutional environment for the immediate, medium and the long term interventions in solid waste management. The outlined policy recommendations detailed in the full report aims to guide the Oyo State Government in identifying areas within the solid waste management sector that would improve efficiency from private sector participation.
Sustainable Innovation in Sport 2017
Timezone:
The Sustainable Innovation in Sport conference brings together key industry stakeholders and leading infuencers who are engendering positive environmental impact through sport.
The sport industry touches hundreds of millions of people globally every year, presenting an unparalleled opportunity to instigate sustainable innovation from within the sports teams, stadiums, governing bodies, ministries – all the way to individual fans’ behaviour.
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Morocco Lets Nothing Go To Waste
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Morocco looks at waste as a resource which can be better managed to fuel the economy and reduce environmental impacts.
- Supported by the World Bank, Morocco aims to increase the rate of recycled material to 20 percent by 2022, while improving the conditions of waste-pickers.
- Oum Azza, the Maghreb’s largest modern landfill facility, derives value from organic waste by tapping into biogas from decomposition.
Scavengers have always known there is value to be found in trash.Twelve years ago, when Milouda Haimar’s elderly husband became too ill to work, she turned to the trash mountain near her home. At night, when her six children were in bed, she would strap a flashlight over her headscarf and join other scavengers picking through the refuse of Rabat, the capital city of Morocco. The most valuable finds were copper, followed by aluminum, hard plastic containers and cardboard. Milouda says she could make about 120 to 250 Dirhams* a night, barely enough to provide for her family.
But the trash heap was unsafe. Men, women, elderly people and children competed for the best finds and went through the trash without gloves, in the rain and blinding sunshine, day and night. Moreover, the trash was located in an old quarry that operated without regulations or oversight from 1980 to 2007.
“It used to smell terrible, with streams of toxic leach flowing into the Bouregreg (the river that runs through Rabat). There were walls of black or white foam blocking the road at times” remembers Gerard Prenant, Director of the private operator that manages the Oum Azza waste management site.
Today, the Bouregreg estuary which discharges to the Atlantic Ocean, is clean enough to attract fishermen and tourists. And Milouda and her fellow trash-pickers have been relocated to a modern facility, the Oum Azza waste management site, where they operate a one-of-a-kind recycling cooperative. This is partly thanks to Morocco’sProgramme National des Déchets Ménagers, through which the Government intends to increase the rate of material collected and recycled from 5 percent today to 20 percent by 2022 while improving the conditions of waste pickers. This Program has been supported by four consecutive World Bank Municipal Solid Waste Development Policy Loans (DPL).
The private operator that runs the Oum Azza site says it is the largest modern sorting and landfilling facility in the Maghreb area, taking in about 850,000 tons of refuse per year. It sponsored the creation of a cooperative and built a sorting facility to help people like Milouda who used to work at the makeshift site, continue earning money but in safer and more organized conditions. About 150 people belong to the cooperative, of which 22 are women.
The members are organized in teams that pick out different types of recyclables on a conveyor belt. “Everyone is paid the same monthly salary of 2,620** Dirhams a month,” explains Yassine Mazzout, President of the Cooperative At-Tawaffouk (which means Success in Arabic), and any excess profit is shared once a year according to the number of hours each one has worked. “Although I make a bit less money than before, there are other advantages,” says Milouda. Cooperative members receive health insurance, access to a bank account and a low mortgage.
The trash pickers also contribute to the business model. The on-site recycling plays an important role: by extracting about 2,200 tons of solid trash per year for resale and turning about 100,000 tons of green garden waste into compost, the cooperative reduces the volume of trash that needs to be buried and prolongs the site’s life expectancy. Yassine would like to recycle more waste and help trash pickers in other cities, like Agadir, get organized.
" What Morocco is doing is exemplary. They are looking at waste as a resource rather than trash. The Oum Azza site is a promising model of what other landfills can and should look like with the roll out of the government program. Combining recycling, value chains and jobs is a good recipe to make the dump story a success story. ", Maria Sarraf, Lead Environmental Economist at the World Bank
The Oum Azza landfill is also set up to derive value from organic waste, which represents a large share of the trash in Morocco (about 60%, compared to 30% in Europe), by tapping into the biogas that results from the process of decomposition. Tubes and spigots will one day convey gas to a nearby cement factory furnace. At the time of the site visit, in October 2015, the operator running Oum Azza was waiting for the adoption of a decree that would allow it to sell excess electricity generated by the biogas to the national grid. Shortly after, the decree was adopted as part of a package of reforms supported by the World Bank Inclusive Green Growth DPL.
For now, the gas is flared, converting methane, a gas that has a very high greenhouse warming effect, into carbon, which is relatively less polluting for the earth’s climate. Oum Azza will be the first landfill in Morocco to sell Carbon Emission Reductions through the Clean Development Mechanism program supported by the World Bank. During its lifetime, the site will generate about half a million tons of CO2 emission reductions through the capture of landfill gas and its use to generate electricity on site.
The landfill operator also has plans to create green compost from garden waste and to sell dry and pulverized trash to cement makers. “Our job is to manage waste, and our interest is in having the least possible trash to bury,” says Prenant.
“What Morocco is doing is exemplary. They are looking at waste as a resource rather than trash. The Oum Azza site is a promising model of what other landfills can and should look like with the roll out of the government program. Combining recycling, value chains and jobs is a good recipe to make the dump story a success story” says Maria Sarraf, Lead Environmental Economist at the World Bank.
