Waste and Consumption

  1. Key initiatives
  2. Waste and Consumption

Modern society has become reliant on speed and convenience in all aspects of consumption. From fast fashion and the boom in next-day deliveries to the extraordinary uptake of fast-food delivery services, convenience and consumerism has taken a toll on our planet’s resources, as well as increased the rate that carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere.

Our throwaway society is also a contributor to a dramatic rise in carbon emissions. Many items, from phones to clothing, are no longer made to last, indeed some extremely cheap clothing items are seen as a ‘wear once and throw away’ item.

Quite apart from the emissions generated by the ever-increasing manufacture of ever more ‘stuff’, the UK waste sector itself accounts for 5% of UK greenhouse gas emissions46 dealing with 221 million tonnes of waste annually.47 Food waste is a major contributor: an average UK household will waste around £500 a year by discarding food and drink48, and £3 billion is wasted by the hospitality and food sector alone.49

The fashion industry has major environmental impacts ranging from greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, waste production and plastic pollution. According to the Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP), UK households send 350,000 tonnes of clothing to landfill each year.50 183 million items of outgrown baby clothes are kept in UK homes, enough to provide 250 items for each baby born in the UK each year.51

The UK’s recycling rate in 2017 was around 45.7%, and yet we get through 13 billion plastic bottles, nine billion cans and three billion coffee cups a year52. So there is plenty of room for improvement.

A better approach to waste includes:

  • Waste prevention - the best environmental option, avoiding resource use
  • Reuse – reduces need for resources and manufacturing
  • Recycling - reduces need for extraction and processing of new resources
  • Composting - returns nutrients and structure to soils, displaces other fertilizers, offers the potential to sequester carbon or, in the case of anaerobic digestion, produces methane which can be used as a renewable energy source. 53

Join the collective

Recycling rates are gradually improving, but initiatives to encourage a sustained increase in that improvement are essential. Surfers Against Sewage have been helping to coordinate hundreds of Plastic Free Communities across the UK and Internationally. There are now more than 80 community fridges across the UK.54 Global organisations like Feedback have a significant presence here in the UK alongside Love Food Hate Waste, a national campaign to help reduce food waste and food poverty.

Co-benefits

Recycling can be a gateway into taking wider environmental issues more seriously. Reducing and sorting waste encourages families to be mindful of the impact their choices have, and encourage more sustainable behaviours, whilst the Green Alliance estimate that as many as 200,000 jobs could be created in waste management. Food waste reduction can help alleviate poverty, bring communities together and encourage healthier eating.

Projects

The Restart Project

The Restart Project brings people together to share skills and gain the confidence to open up their electronic gadgets and small appliances in order to learn how to fix them and hence prolong their use. The project gives people a hands-on way of making a difference, saves them money, as well as providing a forum to talk about the wider issue of the impact from a carbon and resource use perspective.

How it came about

The Restart Project was founded in 2013 out of the founders’ frustration with the current throwaway, consumerist model of electronics, with its inbuilt obsolescence, and the growing mountain of e-waste that it has created. It was set up as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), a new type of charity. The organisation is a social start up, trading to sustain itself and expand its social impact. It operates out of London but the model has been replicated elsewhere in the UK and abroad.

How it works

Restart organises a series of events - known as Restart Parties - where people teach each other how to repair their broken and slow devices – from tablets to toasters, from iPhones to headphones. A Restart Party is a free community event that relies on volunteers - known as Restarters - to work. People who know more about electronics help others repair their devices, and help others take back control of what they buy. The parties can be held anywhere with tables, electrical outlets and wifi, and have typically been held in pubs, community centres, libraries, and galleries. They are convened and facilitated by the local community groups. The local organisers welcome participants, assign repairs to volunteers, and document the fixes.

The focus of the events is on skill-sharing and learning. Participants take active part in the repair and help in troubleshooting, supported by an experienced volunteer.

Members of the public can bring a broken item or just learn by watching the Restarter volunteers at work. Restarters are experienced users of technology: most of them are talented amateurs, who have learned to repair and troubleshoot by employing common sense and by patiently taking apart devices and using online tutorials. Others have professional repair experience.

The Restart Project follows safety guidelines, shared with independent Restart Party Hosts. Safety testing of equipment is encouraged. And groups hosting Restart Parties must be insured.

They also manage and maintain a Restart Directory - this online tool lists businesses in your area that can repair broken gadgets. So far it only covers London Boroughs, but has plans to expand to other areas of the country in future.

Co-benefits

As well as fixing a broken appliance or gadget, the attendees of Restart Parties learn a new skill, becoming familiar with the workings of our most common everyday gadgets. Attendees also save money by not having to buy new versions of their products and learn more about resource use and the carbon emission implications of our throwaway society.

OLIO - the food sharing revolution

OLIO uses technology to connect neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. This could be food nearing its sell-by date in local stores, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from the baker, or the items in your fridge when you go away. OLIO can now also be used for non-food household items too.

How it came about

Two young women, appalled at the amount of food that was wasted decided to develop a way in which people with excess food, or food in their fridge just before they go away, could be connected with others in their local community who could use the food items. The most convenient way to do this was through the development of an app. The app is free for any individual or volunteer community to use, small businesses can use a basic version for free and large businesses pay a fee, which then pays for the app itself and the 25 staff members OLIO now employs.

How it works

Apart from signing up to the app and listing your own food items that you no longer need, OLIO also now offers a number of opportunities to volunteer to help reduce food waste in local communities.

Community Heroes: A Community Hero is a volunteer who spreads the ‘share more, waste less’ mission to people in their neighbourhood, with the help of a Community Hero pack. The pack contains flyers, posters, letters, and other goodies that encourage neighbours to download OLIO and start sharing.

Food Waste Heroes: A Food Waste Hero (FWH) picks up unsold surplus food from businesses to save it from going to waste. Each FWH is part of a team of community volunteers who take responsibility in turns collecting the unsold food, bringing the food home, listing it on the OLIO app, and redistributing to their neighbours, who pick up the food. Over 1,800 FWHs actively rescue unsold food at the end of the day from over 550 businesses, with more joining weekly. There’s also a WhatsApp group with other local FWHs who then work together, share success stories, and cheer each other on.

Co-benefits

Nearly two million individuals have joined the OLIO app and over four million items of food, that would otherwise have been wasted, have been shared among the OLIO community, saving the equivalent of 12 million car miles.

Useful links to tools/resources for Waste and consumption -related projects

If you have stuff that you don’t need, but could be used by others, check out Freegle, a free marketplace where you can give your unwanted household items away.