Motivation 2 / 3

According to the Australian Mindaroo Foundation, Australia has the highest single-use plastic waste consumption in the world at 59 kilograms per capita ([kg/c]data from Statista.com from 2019). USA follows with 53 kg/c. South Korea and Great Britain are right behind with 44 kg/c. Exactly twice as much as Germany - at 22 kg/c .

How can this be better visualized?

Only a small proportion of this (approx. .45 kg/c) corresponds to the approximately 34 disposable cups consumed per capita in Germany each year. 60 percent of these are plastic-coated paper cups, 40 percent are pure plastic cups. With an average weight of 13.3 g per cup, this equates to 452.2 g per capita.

Extrapolated back to Germany, this amounts to around 2.8 billion disposable cups and an additional 1.3 billion plastic lids every year (Statista.com).

Who wouldn’t think of polluted landscapes and littered oceans when they see these figures! Who doesn't think that we urgently need to do everything we can to produce less waste - and should have been doing so for years! But in vain, because according to the 2018 World Bank study "What a waste”, the projected waste generation wil increase by 70% between 2016 and 2050!

Is global waste management failing here?

No - because waste management is responsible for recycling and disposing of the waste produced.

Waste prevention as the top level of the waste hierarchy lies outside the waste management regime. Municipal waste management would also have no legitimacy to influence the drivers of consumption.

A good example of holistic thinking is the city of Tübingen in Germany. Here, it was the city's political leaders who developed and implemented a packaging tax. With the motivation to reduce the consumption of single-use packaging and promote reusable alternatives, the tax came into effect on January 1, 2022. Companies that put the packaging into circulation have been paying for disposable cups, etc. ever since.

The fact that the city of Tübingen has prevailed in court (Federal Administrative Court, Leipzig, May 2023) is a ray of hope in terms of waste avoidance and a beacon for other municipalities.

When it comes to zero waste, it is particularly important to recognize the motivation of the players. This is easy with GAIA, the "Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives”, whose name already reveals its true motivation. Although they organize Zero Waste conferences at a global level, they mainly fight waste incineration as if it were responsible for the daily flood of waste. This seems as absurd as someone campaigning against the consumption of meat by the population and therefore wanting to close the sewage treatment plant.

Many municipalities around the world are working intensely to reduce waste and promote sustainable practices. The city of Munich - as Best Practice shows - demonstrates that almost all departments of an administration are needed to be effective.

This also applies in particular to my favorite Best Practice from 1991 for reducing waste at the Oktoberfest in Munich.

There is also a zero-waste organization in Europe with an unclear motivation. As part of the GAIA network, Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) connects local and national NGOs throughout Europe. The honorable goals of reducing waste are combined in the contracts with the "Zero Waste Candidate Cities” with the demand "not to make any further investments in or support the development of incineration technologies (Missione Zero Akademy, 2021a)”. Cui bono?

It is certainly infinitely more difficult to take on the manufacturers of packaging, the plastics industry, and retailers than to demand that a municipality refrain from incinerating waste. It is already difficult enough for a municipality to implement the 4th level of the waste hierarchy.

Those who are bold enough to do so could also push for extended producer responsibility, which, according to EU regulations, takes those responsible for the flood of packaging by the horns.

Anyone who hides behind the label "zero waste” and ignores the waste hierarchy when disposing of the waste that is nevertheless produced is better off keeping quiet.

Yours,
Werner Bauer
Vice President of GWC