116 ISA BAUD
6.2. INTEGRATING SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
Although recovery, trade and recycling of solid waste materials are widespread in
most countries, opinions about its value have differed widely, and are derived from
several perspectives. Classically, local governments, whose responsibility it is to
collect and dispose of solid waste, have focused their strategies on improving public
health conditions. Solid waste should be quickly removed and disposed of in such a
fashion that it no longer presents a danger to public health. Any activity deviating from
that process should be avoided. Therefore, government attitudes towards reuse,
recovery and recycling of waste materials have usually been very ambivalent. This
attitude is still prevalent in many developing countries, and is reflected in rules and
regulations that prevent material recovery and recycling at early stages of the collec-
tion, transport and disposal cycle (e.g. in Peru).
The public health approach came under increasing pressure in industrialised countries
in the 1960s and 1970s, as consumption patterns changed. The growth in solid waste
flows outgrew the capacity of local and regional waste sinks, and became environmen-
tally and socially unacceptable. As a result, strategies to reduce waste flows and
dispose of them in alternative ways became a major concern. This held true both for
municipalities dealing with domestic waste, as well as for industrial enterprises,
dealing with rising costs for removing waste from production processes (E&U, 1999;
Frijns et al., 1997). End-of-pipe solutions were followed by the more integrated chain
approaches to promote environmental aspects of sustainable development. In the early
1970s, the waste management hierarchy became the internationally accepted standard
for environmental assessment of solid waste management systems as a whole (Blore,
1999) (see Figure 1.1).
Waste minimisation potentially offers the best possibilities for environmental aspects
of sustainable development, by reducing resource use and preventing waste genera-
tion. However, this leads to a focus on changes in production systems, which lie
outside the scope of this volume^3. More commonly, reduction of waste flows through
source separation, reuse and recycling (material and energy recovery) systems have
been introduced by governments in developed countries such as the Netherlands,
which has been active in this area (de Jong, 1999). These systems were based on
households separating materials voluntarily with little or no compensation, and subsi-
dies by governments to reuse and recycle materials (from domestic waste)^4. Implic-
itly, this system was based on households’ agreement with the goals of waste
reduction, and their active co-operation^5.
- (cf. Tukker, 2000) on the use of LCA in considering alternative ways of producing a certain good.
- Industries increasingly recycled either bottling through financial incentives to consumers, or by sepa-
rating and re-using resources used in production processes (these had to be commercially viable, or
made mandatory by government regulation).