Environment - Informing the public

Fear of the unknown is a powerful human emotion. Suppose that a stranger asks you to step into a pitch-black room. Naturally you will feel very reluctant to enter. Not knowing what is inside your mind fills t he void by vividly imagining snakes, an elevator shaft, or any number of other frightening possibilities awaiting you. Your worries quickly dissipate if the light were switched on and you could see that the room was harmless. Providing information to a community is like switching on the light in a dark room.

Persuading people to change their attitude toward waste needs informative process that allows meaningful involvement by the local community. Local citizens should be given operational involvement in the process including meaningful decision-making responsibility. We must treat waste as a resource – a valuable economic commodity. We need to apply education, awareness, and sanitary literacy to achieve a strong waste reduction and recycling ethic. When the public realizes the urgency of the issue they will eventually change their mind set. Japanese were forced by their geography due to shortage of landmass, being a small island, succeeded to achieve about 50% waste recycling compared to UK 17% and US 21% (1995).

In the last century the activities of humans have placed enormous stress on the environment. The exponential growth in population combined with an increasing appetite for fast, easy consumer goods has led to an explosion in the amount of garbage we produce. People in their daily living process produce waste, which should be measured, managed and recycled into the system. Managing waste in a sustainable way, optimising recycling and reuse with growth of the population is significant factor in preserving our environment, and consequently diminishing the risk to public health.

Reusing waste is an area where community groups have led the way. The sector has pioneered many of the services that are wide spread today, including kerbside collection of recyclables. Community groups have been active in the reuse of items, which would otherwise end up as waste, through activities in a broad range such as redistribution of unwanted furniture that would reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

The UK community waste and recycling sector comprises between 850 to 1000 organisations. Most are linked by three main umbrella groups as follows:

- community composting groups
- community recycling network CRN
- furniture reuse network FRN

We need to put waste to good use, through reusing items, recycling composting, using waste as a fuel. Unfortunately ecosystem values are not readily included in financial analyses at present because commonly accepted methods and costs are not available. It is urged that economists undertake the necessary research to rectify this situation. The inability to assign real quantitative costs to environmental factors in waste management facilities does not mean that these factors should be ignored.

Each year we produce over 100 million tonnes of waste from household, commerce and industry. Most of the waste is land filled. We much tackle the quantity of waste produced breaking the link between economic growth and increased waste. Household waste is growing by around 3% each year. Considering the actual growth rate we will need twice as many new management facilities by 2020 as we would if the amount of waste stayed constant. Household waste is a relatively small part of the overall waste stream and just 9 % is recycled and a further 8% has energy recovered from it. The increase of the landfill tax provided waste producers and local authorities with strong incentives to send less waste to land. That is to reduce release of methane it produces and pollution emanated by its transportation.


Tactics in shaping mind-set

The ethics of tactics that raise emotions must be questioned. The creation of a hostile, emotionally charged atmosphere infringes on the right of community members to obtain information and make their own decisions. A factor that is seldom discussed or considered is that trust works in both directions. The missing component is a mechanism, which keeps the atmosphere calm, thus allowing objective dialogue to take place. It is only in such a calm setting that he desires of the community can be considered and informed decisions made. The natural susceptibility of humans particularly in a group to emotional rather than rational behaviour contributes to the unproductive discussions and sittings. It is common at information meetings that activist organise their members into one area where they boo and disrupt proponent speakers who may take a stance that does not agree with theirs. This is very intimidating and fosters a mob togetherness and virtually ensures that citizens will side with their view.

The key step in building an equitable relationship in sitting process is ensuring that the opponents also act in a fair and equitable fashion – in other words, that there is fairness and respect in both directions. Situations should not be allowed to develop where small but well organized and vocal opposition groups use distorted facts and polemic to stampede the potential host community into dropping out of the sitting process. It is essential that issues are thoroughly debated and false statements, distortions, and sensationalism should not be tolerated.

In summary, for meaningful discussion, governing norms need to be established that guide the conduct of involved parties and allow for an objective factual debate in a non-emotional setting.