Waste, Fraud and Abuse

A new UK study suggests that global heating can only be successfully addressed by using less cement, plastic, steel and other materials, and by cutting down the energy used to make what we need to make.  That could be classified under the category of efficiency, or also as cutting down on waste.

Waste is nature's biggest and most important product, but at least it's mostly organic.  Waste is also an alarmingly large part of human civilization these days.  There is tremendous waste in making things, because what's wasted is temporarily cheaper than the cost of wasting less.  But water, land, a host of metals and trace minerals, not to mention energy, will get expensive enough to curtail waste only when they're dangerously close to running out or running dry.

There is mind-boggling waste in making way more stuff than is strictly necessary.  And then there is waste when those products are "thrown away," and claim more resources--either the resources to dispose and recycle them, or the resources they poison, or the human and public health costs when they poison people, and the natural resources people depend on.

A lot of progressives are nodding their heads.  But could you suggest that they eschew a new smart phone or other electronic device?  Or consider what the apparently magical Internet actually costs in energy and materials?  All those miles of servers holding your clouds, so you can share millions of photos of --what exactly?

Sure, new technologies with new functions enhance lives.  And certain technologies are changing so fast that yesterday's is obsolete.  But that's not all that's happening.  There's fashion and addiction, and with both, there is denial.

And the basis is the same market capitalism that sells everything else. I saw a commercial today in which a father was shamefacedly shopping at Radio Shack for a new phone with more and better features, because his current cell phone embarrasses his children.  So there you are.  That's consumer capitalism  in a nutshell.

Ewaste is a huge problem--Americans toss out 100 million cell phones a year.  That's one discarded cell phone for about every three people, a year.  We discard over 41 million computers a year.  And only about 13% of all ewaste is recycled.

It's no better elsewhere.  The EU countries produce 10 million tons of ewaste annually, and it's growing fast.  China disposes of 100 million cell phones a year but that figure is set to rise dramatically--7 times over 2007 levels of ewaste annually by 2020. Worldwide, the UN estimates that ewaste could well rise by 500% over the next decade.

But recycling is itself a huge problem, when the materials are dumped in poor countries and the recycling process involving toxic materials is unsafe.  It's not impossible but it takes admitting there is a problem.

If we wasted less energy just by insulating buildings, smarter design, etc. it would cut carbon emissions substantially.  Remember REDUCE, REUSE and recycle?  More with less?  Or maybe just less. But the psychology of waste is basic to contemporary culture, even as it has a certain desperate quality.  That has to be dealt with.

So does fraud--the fraud perpetrated by fossil fuel companies, their obscene government subsidies and well funded lying.  And so does abuse--abuse of the planet.  You want to cut waste, fraud and abuse?  Here you go.