Overview:

The Waste Hierarchy is an approach, favoured by many Governments, on how organisations should deal with waste. The Hierarchy has four elements: Reduce: this is the most preferred option where organisations reduce their waste generally by being more effective in what they do and more efficient in how they do it Reuse: instead of getting rid of an item once it has been used, it is used again for the same, or a different, purpose. Examples include using the back of a unwanted-printed sheet, reusing bottle to store other liquids and so on.

Recovery: this is the case when the item can no longer be used by the original owner and is recovered to be used by others. The form and the state of the item is very likely to be changed during Recovery. For example, a steel can may be recycled into a steel rail, a plastic bottle recycled into a plastic pallet, vegetable peelings can be composted. Discarded items can be recovered through conversion to provide energy, the options include anaerobic digestion to produce methane, or incineration. The latter is less preferred as it can also generate pollution.

Disposal: This is the least preferred option and is basically containment of the disposed items, often in a landfill. Incineration can also be deployed as it can reduce the waste to one-third its original volume.

Origins of the Waste Hierarchy:
Unknown, but is used in several forms. One splits Recovery into: Recycle / Energy Recovery / Incineration. The UK Government in its 2000 Waste Strategy displays the four elements shown in the diagram above.

Using the Waste Hierarchy:

The Waste Hierarchy can be roughly divided into two parts: those activities that can be carried out by operational teams in an organisation and those that are carried out by specialists outside the organisation. Achieving improved performance on “Reduce” is consistent with many performance improvement programmes that emphasise quality through the reduction of defects and wastes. Lean Operations, Six Sigma Quality are all good examples of “Reduce”. Reuse is a more difficult manage as a business procedure although it is a concept everyone grasps at home: using old envelopes to store papers, reusing old bottles, storing pens in mugs. At work, this is a bit different - reusing scrap paper at work is well-accepted, but making it a policy will mean caveats and exceptions (e.g. business reports should not be on re-used paper).

Issues with the Waste Hierarchy:
The Waste Hierarchy is often used by environmental specialists with the focus on addressing an end-of-pipe problem. Reduce is often seen as waste minimisation through technology. The link with quality management and process improvement is not frequently made.

Although the latest incarnation of the ISO 14000 Environmental Management Standards showed significant convergence with the ISO 9000 Quality Management Standards. However, not all environmental specialists are familiar with business processes that reduces wastes like Six Sigma Quality or Lean Operations. This means that many still expect to use technology solutions to reduce or manage waste rather than using business processes to reduce it.

Recycling is probably the most popular element of the Waste Hierarchy with public exhortations on recycling this or that. However, this may deflect attention from “reduce”, a much better way towards sustainable development. The problem with “reduce” is that it requires effort on our part to do something, like cutting back some form of consumption. Recycling is just segregating the rubbish, the consumption has already taken place!

However, it is just possible that all the attention on recycling can mean a lower focus on reducing, which is likely to have a larger effect on sustainable development.

References:
DEFRA

Waste Strategy 2000 for England and Wales Part 1, Department of the Environment, Transport and Regions, (now DEFRA) May 2000