Multiple agendas are being pursued to save planet earth – fight against global warming, climate change, loss of biodiversity, ecological imbalances, but compulsions of electoral politics and business interests will ensure that nothing beyond lip service is available to any agenda that has no business potential. While this fight must continue, we must focus on energy efficiency and efficiency in waste management, as every alarming signal is ignored.
The futures of the planet (yes, plural) is indeterminate because there are multiple probabilities at work but certainly a composite function of factors such as climate change, mining (coal, cobalt, lithium, copper), ecological imbalances, decreasing biodiversity, indifferent construction, mounting waste – both old and new, gross inefficiencies, wars and the ensuing and lingering destruction, a fawning over technology, grossly skewed distribution of powers among and within nations (itself contributing to several imbalances), multiple and competing agendas, to mention the most prominent. Each group is convinced that reaching the goals they have identified is what will ‘save’ planet earth. And this, in certain instances, takes violent turns.
A CNN story shows says that “scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise” spelling doom in the next 200 years – https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/20/climate/doomsday-glacier-thwaites-melt-sea-level-rise/index.html. If this were alarming, consider that global spending on subsidies that harm environment rises to $2.6tn and an “analysis finds $800bn increase in direct support for activities including deforestation and fossil fuel use” (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/18/spending-subsidies-environment-deforestation-pollution-fossil-fuels-aoe). Is it any surprise that the fossil fuel industry continues to make large-scale investments?
The unfortunate truth is that unless there is a business angle, nothing moves ahead. The emergence of the renewable energy sector and waste management bear this out. A California ballot asked voters to invest in climate solutions – https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20092024/california-prop-4-climate-solutions/.
Two recent articles in The Guardian show how business dominates, attempting to shield a popular and profitable chemical PFAS called ‘forever chemicals’ from regulatory scrutiny over greenhouse gases. The US Senate has carefully chosen the language of its resolution to pursue this goal (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/12/pfas-military-toxic-gases-definition). Interestingly, The Guardian ran another story the previous day: The Environment Agency was warned about the “chronic threat” that firefighting foams containing PFAS “forever chemicals” pose to the environment in 2003, 20 years before it started the process of regulating the chemicals, it can be revealed.
Wisdom in choice
Hence, the future of our planet hinges on two factors: energy efficiency and efficiency in waste management which includes recycling. Both are growing businesses and have the potential to make some difference to some of the problems plaguing the earth. The mathematically inclined can see that I am resorting to the concept of constrained optimization, a topic taught in mathematics but has a wider relevance and scope. These interlinked efficiencies will matter the most because energy efficiency will produce waste and waste management including recycling needs different kinds of efficiencies including energy.
In all the hype over AI, cloud, digital all of which need massive data centres, which are attracting enormous investments, we are forgetting that these are power-hungry. And while we have always lived with waste (landfills are bursting), newer forms of waste such as e-waste and space debris are already assuming alarming proportions. Space debris is already a topic in UPSC examinations!
Waste management & recycling
Waste is an inevitable outcome of any economic activity, from the most primitive to the sophisticated, but surplus output is as much a waste as is waste as a by-product of production. It has become a problem now because we are producing enormous amounts and struggling to find efficient ways to manage them. Fast fashion has an inevitable corollary of waste: nearly 92 million tonnes of garments end up in landfills with the garment industry accounting for 10% of global carbon emissions (https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/). For other information on clothing waste please check these two: https://www.roadrunnerwm.com/blog/textile-waste-environmental-crisis and https://www.greenamerica.org/unraveling-fashion-industry/what-really-happens-unwanted-clothes.
The UN Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 published in February presents a bleak picture: “Municipal solid waste generation is predicted to grow from 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050. In 2020, the global direct cost of waste management was an estimated USD 252 billion. When factoring in the hidden costs of pollution, poor health and climate change from poor waste disposal practices, the cost rises to USD 361 billion. Without urgent action on waste management, by 2050 this global annual cost could almost double to a staggering USD 640.3 billion”. The report makes a plea to turn waste into a resource through the adoption of the concept of circular economy, which basically emphaises reuse (https://www.unep.org/resources/global-waste-management-outlook-2024). Please check https://www.statista.com/topics/4983/waste-generation-worldwide/#topicOverview for data on all kinds of waste. Please also read https://www.britannica.com/technology/space-debris.
Efficient recycling is integral to any meaningful view of waste management as there are different challenges depending on the product being recycled. In the case of plastics, the search is for more efficient processes – https://news.mit.edu/2022/plastics-recycling-cobalt-catalyst-1006. For recycling of batteries in the European Union, read https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Waste_statistics_-_recycling_of_batteries_and_accumulators&stable=0. Or in textiles, check https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590262824000510.
Recycling is still in its nascent stages in India and the world but has to pick up momentum because landfills are bursting and polluting. The challenge in recycling is many-fold: collection and distribution (plastic waste), innovative processes (extracting lithium from batteries for reuse), durability and robustness (paver blocks from construction debris), extreme care (nuclear waste) and so on.
Energy efficiency
It is not often realised that achieving energy efficiency, a growing business, is closely linked to R&D in metallurgy and filtration processes. The entire metals industry is striving towards energy efficiency; it is common knowledge that aluminium smelters, steel manufacturing to mention just two basic metals, are hugely power-hungry. I am just mentioning some sources of data.
https://www.tmeic.com/industry-solution/energy-savings-metals-industry
https://www.iea.org/articles/driving-energy-efficiency-in-heavy-industries
There are newer dimensions given the rise of electric vehicles, making energy efficiency a function of thermal sciences, as battery management is inherently a function of thermal engineering – BTMS: battery thermal management system. I will wager that metals and thermal engineering together will make a lot of difference to energy efficiency as will recycling of battery waste, a complex task.
The purpose of this article to make an argument, not to load you with volumes of data. Frankly, it is a no-brainer to make a case for efficiency in energy and waste management, because there is a business in these two. If anything, the scales are tilted in favour of waste management.
