Upcycle Global Gobs of Waste?

I subscribe to the Economist, and it’s a great read, but really dense. A couple of years ago, a special report on global waste came out, and as usual, it was excellent, and densely voluminous in content. I clipped it and saved it into my file of cool stuff (you have one of those too, right?) where it became one of my inspirations for starting Hipcycle, a company that sells upcycled products.

The report has all sorts of interesting nuggets scattered about. Check it out, but a few the nuggets that caught my eye and had me grabbing the highlighter include:

The average Westerner produces over 500kg of municipal waste a year, but municipal waste from households and businesses makes up just 24% of the total waste…construction, demolition, and mining make up almost two thirds of it. Wow! That is a lot of stuff going to landfills! To many consumers, the archetype of waste is the kitchen trash bag or the street corner waste bin, but that is really just a small piece of the pie. Not sure where the opportunities lie with upcycling mining waste, but seeing lots of reclaimed building materials in Hipcycle products will definitely be a goal.

Speaking of mining waste, extracting enough gold to make a typical wedding ring generates three tons of it. That too is pretty amazing. I guess the days of finding meatball-sized gold nuggets in streams is over. In related news, there are only 32 Google search results for "sustainably sourced gold." Sounds like a business opportunity to me…anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

But it’s not all bad. There is enough depressing statistics in the report that I could just go on and on highlighting the negative. But no, there are some sources of inspiration too. For example, the city of San Francisco keeps some 70% of its waste out of landfills—one of the highest rates in the world. It has written the contract with its waste management vendor in such a way that the more the firm recycles, the more money it earns. I absolutely love the alignment of economic/business goals here with environmental goals. Anyone that hears me talk enough knows that I feel that this is one of the most important concepts in improving the environmental situation of our planet.

Another example of this alignment is “lightweighting,” which is the name for the steady reduction in materials used to make the same goods. It is a new term to me, but I like it! The less materials used in a product, the less that eventually needs to be dealt with once the product’s useful life is over. This term is often used with electronics, but it is not only electronic gadgets that have become smaller and lighter over the years (although the world does discard up to 50m tons of electronic goods waste every year). Many other things too, from cars to plastic bags, are also being lightweighted. The average aluminum drink can is now only half as thick as it was in the 1960s, and Coors has reduced the weight of its beer cans by 7% in the past five years alone. That means savings not only on the metal itself but also on transport and even cooling, since thinner cans chill faster. Cool indeed: less materials and cheaper shipping help Coors’ bottom line and the environment. No compromise needed!

Finally, I’ll share one last (sustainably-sourced gold) nugget with you. The report says that British consumers rank the environment as their third priority after price and convenience. Just for the sake of argument, and because I don’t have a better source at my fingertips, I’ll l assume Americans have similar priorities. Now, with that, I’ll say that I’m surprised. I would have assumed that product features & benefits and how the product makes the consumer feel (This Lexus makes me feel taller/ sexier/ hipper/ richer/ skinnier/ more like Lady Gaga) would also have been higher priorities. If my assumption is correct, and I think it probably is, it speaks even stronger to the notion that any sort of “green” product must also be something that consumers actually want, since many of us will not buy something just because it is the right thing to do. Cheers to those who will, but to expand environmental consumerism, this alignment is needed.

As always, thanks for reading and for supporting Hipcycle. Stay tuned for our e-commerce site to launch in the fall with a great line of upcycled furniture, housewares and garden products. In the meantime, if you have comments on this post, please share with me in the space below.