by Scottie Paterson - Cairns Regional Council
A central pillar of our Schools Waste Education program is rebooting our thinking with regards to looking after our waste, a fantastic tool for demonstrating preferred actions that students, schools, and residents can all take is known as the Waste Hierarchy.
So what is the Waste Hierarchy?
In 1979 a Dutch politician, by the name of Ad Lansink introduced a new way of thinking around maximising the efficient use of resources, by ranking waste management options by what would best for the environment. He mapped out actions from most preferable to least, starting with reducing and avoiding waste, reusing materials where possible, recycling, recovering (incineration & energy) lastly landfilling disposal.
The graphic representation was first called 'Lansink's Ladder' but later evolved into the Waste Hierarchy. The intention of the tool was for government and individual actions of waste management to ‘step up the ladder’, away from landfill dependency into higher order actions, to set out to prioritise managing waste from the top down, towards reducing the amount of waste and preserve natural resources (and virgin material sources).
39 years later this method of thinking, this very model we call the 'Waste Hierarchy', has formed the backbone of countless federal, state and local government's planning all over the world, including our very own Cairns Regional Council Waste Reduction and Recycling Strategy (2018-2027).
How can we use this tool to rethink and reboot our thinking at home or school?
Let's take the single use of a plastic PET bottle, though not preferred (at all), for many this type of item is simply disposed of when used, being placed in waste bins all across Cairns. Let's move this item up the ladder (or pyramid), moving out of landfill waste (disposing), skipping incineration for energy (recovering) and up to recycling. Clearly this method is preferred over landfilling or incineration, as it keeps the material in a circular loop, the product reformed into new items and remaining in use. But, how do we advance this item to the very top of the ladder? School students all over Cairns have this one sorted, they would tell us use reusable water bottles, avoid the single use option completely! Now we aren't adding to the 50 billion bottles of water being bought each year globally. The Waste Hierarchy method can be used across all of our problem waste items in this way, soft plastic bags, styrofoam products, coffee cups all avoided and switched for reusable options. How can we apply this to our school, community group and business decisions? It’s up to us to reboot our thinking about the waste material we create each day.
We still have a long journey ahead of us in moving away from landfill dependency towards a circular economy, but thanks to great thinkers like Ad Lansink and his fantastic Waste Hierarchy model we are in a far better position in North Queensland to take meaningful action today with our management of waste and resources.
Have a wonderful day
Scottie Paterson - Waste Education Officer, Cairns Regional Council