Waste in the United Kingdom (Part 4) by Nick Upton, 2006
 
 

 		  
3. The Benefits of Waste Regulation
One of the most basic ways in which waste is regulated is that it is largely disposed of off-site, this is true for waste produced by business, households and local services such as schools. This is both because most people do not have the facilities to dispose of it themselves and because they are encouraged by local authorities not to. Instead, waste is either collected from the door or must be disposed of according to regulations; the most obvious benefit of this is that large piles of waste, which can be breeding grounds for disease, do not build up. Although this is a benefit that most would not argue with, some think that this very removal of waste succeeds in generating even more than would be generated if people were to be left to dispose of it themselves. By detaching people from the scale of the issue, they are encouraged to see waste as someone else’s problem, i.e. that is the local council’s problem (Seymour & Girardet, 1987).
 
  By forcing people to deal with their own waste they may well be inclined to think far more about how much they produce and be far more resourceful in recycling and reusing waste. Indeed, by leaving people to deal with their own waste a more fertile ground for the production of new ideas relating to the treatment of waste is likely to exist, with the possibility of alternative methods that no one has previously given thought to arising.

Methods of disposal alternative to municipal landfills do exist: until recently vultures in India played a large part in the disposal of household waste before they became endangered, and this fact is now central to the conservation efforts for this species in India (Baral, Gautam & Tamang, 2005). Similarly, early records of kites scavenging on household waste in the streets of London reveal an alternative version to waste disposal (Cocker, 2005), and the decree banning this practice because of the health hazard posed by the kites (Channing, 2001) may have been one of the earliest forms of waste regulation in the UK. However, this reinforces the benefits of the current system, if ever it were needed, in that disease and pestilence are not now at the levels they were at this point in time or, indeed, are currently in India.

If there were no regulation on waste disposal then it would be inevitable that some sections of society would have different views on how to dispose of it than others, leading to people simply dumping it wherever there was space, creating unsightly piles of refuse wherever one looked, not to mention the safety hazards this would cause. The issue of safety highlights another benefit of waste regulation, especially where hazardous substances are concerned. In the past substances such as motor oils, gardening chemicals, paints and even toxic waste were simply buried underground from whence they were able to leak into the soil, creating pollution and health problems which can be very expensive to solve; the cleanup of toxic waste sites cab cost hundreds of millions of pounds (English Nature, 2005a). With sensible regulation the health and pollution problems can be avoided, something recognised by the World Health Organisation when publishing a series of guides for local authorities (WHO, 1995a; 1995b;1996) and at the same time great financial savings can be made. Proper waste regulation, in terms of minimisation can be extremely beneficial to business, something which until recently has not been apparent to many. Wasted resources have to be paid for and these costs are passed on to the customer, making a product less competitive and/or reducing profit for the manufacturer; by cutting down this waste in the manufacturing process (the same is true for the “manufacture” of services also) then profit and competitiveness can be increased (Gore, 1992): waste minimisation programs have benefited industry greatly where they have been implemented (WHO, 1996), reducing “operating costs by at least 1% of company turnover” (ETBPP, 1997).

In the last twenty five years there has been an increasing awareness that mankind is consuming resources at an unsustainable rate (Gore, 1992). Waste regulation can do a lot to make our behaviour rather more sustainable; by reusing and recycling items the need to use further natural resources is reduced and at the same time the pollution created whilst making new goods is minimised. In this way forests do not need to be logged for the production of paper or timber and mines do not need to be dug for the fuel or raw materials involved in the manufacturing process thereby saving valuable habitat for, all too often, rare species. In a more abstract way reusing and recycling can save large amounts of energy; manufacturing goods requires the input of energy in terms of labour and fuels, and by disposing of these goods this energy is lost. So, by reusing and recycling, the productivity of the energy used in the process of manufacture can be increased. These benefits of waste regulation are rather long term and not as obvious as health issues from disease or landscape issues, possibly explaining why regulation for these aims are relatively new. However, the benefits of this type of regulation are immediate, long-lasting and wide-ranging, benefiting this and future generations as well as all species.
Next : Is Current Waste Regulation Effective?