Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay in our posting for Friday. The days are melding into one as the semester becomes more and more hectic. We seek your understanding and hope that you did not miss us too much! In this post, we will be concluding the theme on waste pollution, particularly focusing on defining wastes. As usual, let us begin by comparing the definitions
Comparison
Our Definition: “redundant materials produced by any process that is unintentional, unusable and/or unrecoverable.”
EPHA’s Definition: “waste” includes —
(a) any substance which constitutes a scrap material or an effluent or other unwanted surplus substance arising from the application of any process; and
(b) any substance or article which requires to be disposed of as being broken, worn out, contaminated or otherwise spoiled,
(c) and anything which is discarded or otherwise dealt with as if it were waste shall be presumed to be waste unless the contrary is proved; (SSO, 1987)
Based on the definitions above, we can compare the definitions of waste.
Similarities
In both definitions, the conventional meaning of waste is captured. Waste is interpreted (in red) as a substance that is unwanted or rendered unusable. More interestingly, both definitions also defined wastes as an output from “any process” (in purple). This means that any activity can result in the production of waste. This includes the wide sources of waste, such as households and industries. Even though food scraps and scrap metals may be completely different from each other, this allows the laws to recognise both as “wastes”.
Differences
The main difference is the additional way waste is defined. We included “unrecoverable” (in blue) wastes into our definition, basing it off the laws of thermodynamics. For example, microplastics are one of such “unrecoverable” substances. “Unrecoverable” waste does not mean that it has no capacity to pollute! Even if we could theoretically scour the oceans for all microplastics and recycle them back into plastic, doing so is energetically and temporally impossible (Cleveland & Ruth, 1997). To substantiate our claims on “unrecoverable” wastes as pollutive, we can see how microplastics harm our natural environments. These plastics can contain chemicals that disrupt the endocrine systems which leads to further complications and contribute to mortality and morbidity (Amereh, Babaei, Eslami, Fazelipour, & Rafiee, 2020; Chen, Allgeier, Yin, & Hollert, 2019). To learn more about the issue of marine pollution, do check out Jaslyn and Wink’s blog post on the human impacts on oceans here!
On the other hand, the EPHA includes substances that are “discarded or otherwise dealt as if it were waste” (in green), basing it on social expectations of waste. In this case, the EPHA recognises wastes as substances that may be new but can be treated as waste if deemed so. The implications and danger of using such a definition is mentioned in our previous post, but from the example of food waste, there is no doubt that this is a problem. Thus, the law should encompass such a definition to better understand and tackle such problems in the future.
Opinions
In our opinion, we find both definitions of waste to be clear and necessary. Thus, we suggest the synthesis of both definitions to form a better definition for waste:
“Waste includes redundant materials produced by any process that is unintentional, unusable and/or unrecoverable, or anything treated as disposed of as if it is.”
Before we end off this post, we have a burning question on the back of our minds. Nowhere is “resource” being defined, so is it implicitly taken as anything that is not “waste”? If so, what if wastes are increasingly becoming resources? Today, the Singaporean government is striving to become a circular economy (MSE, 2020). A circular economy takes the saying “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” seriously as the industries are designed in such a way that the “waste” from an industry can be used as a resource for another (WEF, 2020). An ideal circular economy eradicates any conventional forms of “waste”, as outputs are no longer “unintentional” or “unusable”, although the “unrecoverable” wastes as a result of the fundamental law of the universe would still exist.
To go even further, we ask: “In such a world, where wastes can become resources, is there a need to explicitly define resources?” We welcome all of you to discuss this with us in the comment section down below. We’ll see you in the next post!
Signing off,
Ryan and Lee Yang
References
Amereh, F., Babaei, M., Eslami, A., Fazelipour, S., & Rafiee, M. (2020). The emerging risk of exposure to nano (micro) plastics on endocrine disturbance and reproductive toxicity: From a hypothetical scenario to a global public health challenge. Environmental Pollution, 261, 114158.
Chen, Q., Allgeier, A., Yin, D., & Hollert, H. (2019). Leaching of endocrine disrupting chemicals from marine microplastics and mesoplastics under common life stress conditions. Environment international, 130, 104938.
Cleveland, C. J., & Ruth, M. (1997). When, where, and by how much do biophysical limits constrain the economic process? A survey of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s contribution to. Ecological economics, 22, 203-223.
MSE. (2020). Circular Economy. Retrieved from https://www.towardszerowaste.gov.sg/circular-economy/
SSO. (1987). Environmental Public Health Act. Singapore Retrieved from https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/EPHA1987.
WEF. (2020). From linear to circular—Accelerating a proven concept. WEF. Retrieved from https://reports.weforum.org/toward-the-circular-economy-accelerating-the-scale-up-across-global-supply-chains/from-linear-to-circular-accelerating-a-proven-concept/