“Less may be more, but endless is most,” said green architect and entrepreneur William McDonough.
He was speaking on Thursday, Oct. 29 at the 2015 Zero Waste Conference in Vancouver, encouraging the audience to rethink our relationship with the garbage that we create.
The event brought together business leaders, politicians, and engineers from around the world to discuss exactly how to transition Canada to a circular economy.
In a circular economy, no material is wasted at any step of an assembly line and no waste goes into the landfill at the end. Electronics are stripped to their component parts and used to make new ones, while organic waste is composted and shipped back to farms to help grow the next year’s crops.
The Richmond Energy Garden, operated by Harvest Power, is based on this economic philosophy. The facility takes in compost, digests it using bacteria, and burns the resulting gases to generate enough electricity to power 900 homes. The byproducts of this process: nutrient rich soil and huge amounts of waste diverted from landfills.
In the opening keynote, McDonough asserted the necessity of this kind of efficiency, saying, “If we are to be the dominant species [on Earth], then that also implies that we must be stewards.”
He went on to describe Cradle to Cradle certification, a standard that is awarded to products that are assembled with recycling and environmental safety in mind. However, this certification has a caveat: processes must improve in efficiency over time, or they lose their certification. He explained that the goal is to encourage manufacturers to refine their processes over time in order to reach the ideal of zero waste.
Vancouver is already seen as a global leader in sustainability. The city was rated the fourth greenest city in the world in 2014 by the Global Green Economy Index. Also, Vancouverites themselves are especially aware of waste management, according to Iain Gulland of Zero Waste Scotland. “I’ve been impressed,” he said, “A lot of people in Vancouver already understand [what a circular economy is].”
Throughout the event, corporations stepped up to talk about the steps that they were taking to reduce their ecological impact. Representatives from Loblaws and Walmart discussed ways that they were reducing food waste at every step of the supply chain.
The afternoon keynote speaker, Stefan Sjostrand, is president of IKEA Canada and he described his company’s pursuit of a simple goal. “Our vision is to create a better everyday life for people,” he said, adding that IKEA has been deliberate about only using energy efficient LED bulbs and serving sustainably-harvested seafood in its restaurants. He then addressed his peers, “I’d like to challenge other businesses to do the same.”
Although the development of more advanced technologies will help Canada reach a circular economy, many experts at ZWC were calling for a shift in how we think about waste and social responsibility to begin with. McDonough urged the audience to not try to get the most out of giving the least, but instead ask “how much can we give for all that we get?”
The conference comes at a critical time in global sustainability: the United Nations recently set a target for cutting food waste in half by 2030 in their Sustainable Development Goals.
If Canada reaches that goal, it might because there are a few people in Vancouver that have already gotten their hands dirty.
