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The
recent news about General Motors' 500 million dollars investment in Lyft, laid out GM's plans to develop an on-demand network of
self-driving cars with the ride-sharing service."We think our business and personal mobility will
change more in the next five years than the last 50," GM President Dan
Ammann said in an interview with Reuters. The announcement came as Toyota
Motor Corp and Ford Motor Co said they would adopt the same software to link
smartphone apps to vehicle dashboard screens. Toyota and Ford, two of the
world's biggest automakers, invited rival car companies to join them to counter
the push by Apple, Alphabet, Tesla Motors Inc and others into self-driving
cars, or what the industry calls autonomous vehicles. So, it is time to warm up
the discussion about driverless cars' use in waste management and recycling
issues. And as you probably imagine, driverless cars fit perfectLy with robotics and artificial intelligence.
Robotics
Robots
are already here. More than 22 millions of them are in use in several
industrial applications, continuously working and connected to the Web.
Although they have been proved both much more difficult and expensive than it
was initially expected, the combination of robots with the new sensors and the
advances of artificial intelligence have set the scene for an exponential
growth of robotics within next 5-10 years.
Robots
are already in use in the waste management industry. Back to 2010, Mitsubishi
and Osaka University researchers presented a robot that identifies different
plastic materials among rubbish and sorts them into piles. SADAKO in Spain has
created a commercial model (Wall-B) able to sort mixed household waste, equipped with a
suction system adapted to small, light and very heterogeneous target objects.
The Finnish company Zen Robotics is focused in C&D waste, with its robot
capable of replacing up to 15 human waste sorters. VOLVO is currently
working on a joint venture to develop a robot that interacts with the refuse
truck and its driver to accomplish the work.
The
potential benefits of using robots are countless but it seems that their use
will be controversial: robots will replace hundreds of thousands or even
millions of workers in recycling and waste management, creating a huge negative
social impact and intense conflicts.
Artificial Intelligence, driverless cars and drones
Artificial
Intelligence (AI) is already reshaping our lives. Either it is the rapid
response of Google to any search we made or the speech recognition, AI has
become a business as usual element of the daily lives of billions. Driverless
cars and drones are equipped with advanced AI systems that are working in
combination with powerful sensors. Their evolution goes really fast.
It
is no surprise that many car manufacturers are beginning to think about cars
that take the driving out of your hands altogether. These cars will be safer,
cleaner, and more fuel-efficient than their manual counterparts. Yet, there are
several issues to be resolved, but it seems that we are on the way to resolve
them. If the experts are right, the most important problems will be managed
before 2020.
Google
recently announced that by 2017 they would start to deliver packages with
drones, on a massive scale. Amazon has already published its first efforts to
use drones for delivering its products. The US Federal Aviation Agency is
working hard to complete a drones traffic management system until the end of
2016 and the first US database with legally licensed drones will be completed
next month.
Driverless
collection of recyclables will not be that difficult in certain parts of the
world. And if you imagine a drone delivering your supermarket supplies to your
window and taking back your recyclables, you probably are close to a reality
that’s on the way.
The
consequences to traditional waste management will be tremendous. On demand
hybrid collection services will become mainstream and the road towards a
completely automatic and auto-optimized collection system will open. Important
cost reduction is expected by the use of drones and driverless cars, but first
there must be substantial investments. But, there is a high risk of more or
less jobless collection and recycling systems, especially in the most
technologically advanced places of the world.
However, there is a very interesting comment on the future of driverless cars. Dave
King, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, in a
recent interview at Washington Post mentions that the future of driverless cars is not going to be like we think. Well, let's continue the debate...
Few hours before the official release of the new Star Wars sequel (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) the buzz about the movie has skyrocketed. Harrison Ford revealed how his leg was almost broken by hydraulic forces. The new movie is expected by decades of millions of impatient Star Wars fans. But the same is true for the reaction of the waste management industry to the tsunami of the third industrial revolution - I dare to write that we need something like a rapid awakening and paradigm shift in order to surf on the huge waves of the current technological, social and economic change.
"Our world is becoming more controversial than ever. We are
capable to identify the quantity and quality of water in March, in a distance
which ranges between 35-100 million km
but, due to poverty and lack of appropriate global response, roughly 700
million people (1 to 10) lack access to safe water. We are discussing how to
utilize the Internet of Things in industrialized economies but, according the
recent ISWA’s “Wasted Health: The tragic
case of dumpsites” report, the health impacts of dumpsites are worst than
malaria in India, Indonesia and Philippines. On the bright side, the third
industrial revolution creates new, unimaginable opportunities for making
sustainability a cornerstone of each and every industrial sector. On the dark side,
the recent “Global Waste Management
Outlook” (GWMO) report revealed that roughly 2-3 billion people lack the
most elementary waste services while
As far as we know, industrial revolutions are long
historical waves that gradually cover the planet. In reality, even now, there
are parts of our world that have not been so much affected by the second
industrial revolution. So no one expects that the third industrial revolution
would soon transform the whole planet. But the current industrial revolution is
based on technologies that follow exponential rather than linear paths of
development – practically it means that the change that is coming will be too
big and too fast. And this change is happening with the current shift of power
(from global “north” to global “south”) and the continuously growing global
interconnectivity. It is expected that the current industrial revolution will
affect mostly the developing world (roughly 40% of the planet’s population). The
poorer part of the world will benefit much more than the richer one, for the
first time in the history of industrial revolutions.
In this rapidly changing landscape, disruption of
traditional industries will very soon be the new “business as usual”. A recent
IDC report, published on November 4 this year, predicts that by 2020 one third
of the top 20 firms, in every industry, will be seriously disrupted or even
failed. The recycling and waste management industry seems unprepared for substantial
changes – unfortunately, a good, even if complicated and expensive, adaptation
plan is not enough. What is coming is a radical redefinition of what is called
waste and how it will be managed."
Well, this is the introduction of my new article "Third industrial revolution and the future of recycling" that was published yesterday at the Waste Management World magazine (November - December 2015 issue) - you can register for free and enjoy the whole article plus a great content from many important contributors. If you want to continue click here
As the discussions in Paris are getting hotter, some serious
dilemmas are getting more obvious – unfortunately, we are still far away from
having a common and targeted response to the questions posed. Let’s see the example of Bangladesh. With a
population of 140 million, Bangladesh is one of the world's most populated
countries. It is also one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate
change. Cyclones, floods and droughts have long been part of the country's
history and they have intensified in recent years. As a result of the long
exposure to these hazards, Bangladesh is a world leader in adaptation
strategies but this has come with a heavy price tag. Bangladesh’s Ministry of
Finance has been working with the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative to
launch its first comprehensive climate change accounting system. The results of
the financial review were really astonishing.
Bangladesh currently spends $1 billion a year, 6 to 7% of
its annual budget, on climate change adaptation. This is roughly 20% of the
World Bank’s forecasted adaptation budget for the next 35 years! But it was
spent just for one year (but this is another story, there are a lot of
questions about the reliability of those long-term forecasts and their
documentation). The facts reveal that 75% of money spent on climate change in
the country comes directly from the government, while 25% comes from
international donors. There is one more shocking detail: the average European
citizen emits as much carbon in 11 days as the average Bangladeshi in an entire
year.
Then, allow me to come back to my previous post on Climate
Justice. We can’t put the burden for fighting climate change and funding
adaptation strategies to the citizens of Bangladesh, we simply can’t ask them
to pay for their protection from the pollution that the Western World has
created – but this is exactly what’s happening now, in many cases, as the case
of Bangladesh. If we don’t stop this practice, we simply erode any reliable
agreement on Climate Change – as I have already written there is no real
agreement without Climate Justice.
Ok, but someone can say that rich countries are committed to
provide 100 billion dollars to developing countries by 2020. On December 2, the
US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern had told a press conference that
donor countries were “well on the way to beating that pledge”. But allow me to
mention that I have some doubts about those 100 billion dollars. Initially, I
doubt a little bit about if those money will be, finally, available and also, I
have my questions regarding the time horizon in which they will be given. In addition “If
today’s public adaptation finance were divided among the world’s 1.5 billion
smallholder farmers in developing countries, they would get around $3 each year
to cope with climate change – the price of a cup of coffee in many rich
countries,” as Oxfam’s climate policy adviser Jan Kowalzig recently said.
But, unfortunately, I have a more important doubt. Are those
100 billion dollars going to be given as loans (which means actually as an
investment that will provide a certain profit) or as grants? Is it going to be
recognition that rich countries have to pay a big part of the bill they have
created or it will be one more way to create long-term dependencies of the poor
countries? Gambia’s environment minister, and representative of the least
developed countries group, Pa Ousman Jarju was absolutely right when he said:
“We cannot take loans to pay for climate change and take that as climate
finance. For us it needs to be grant-based finance because we are not responsible
for what is happening.” So, let’s hope he will be heard, but let’s think that
if the rich countries follow the path of loans, any climate deal will be
fragile, ineffective and it will create much more problems than it will
resolve.
Two recent headlines made me hopeful and desperate too.
First, Facebook just announced that it’s moving fast towards
incorporating more advanced Artificial Intelligence (see this for a great summary of what is planned) to its core business. Facebook
chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer announced a slew of new FAIR research Tuesday,
including a system that can analyze photos, determine what they depict, and
offer a verbal description—a feature that is particularly valuable for blind
people. What an amazing perspective this will be!
Second, The New York Times has taken its first step intovirtual reality, launching a new app and distributing a Google cardboard viewer
that offers “a new form of storytelling”. Subscribers can download the mobile
app and use it alone, or enhance the experience by using headphones and the
special virtual-reality viewer, which “simulates richly immersive scenes” and
offers a 360-degree view.
Well, the third industrial revolution goes on much faster
than we think. But still, our planet has many faces and the third industrial
revolution will change almost all of them. The beautiful and hopeful face: we
are capable to identify the quantity and quality of water in March, in a
distance which ranges between 35-100
million km, depending on the orbits of the two planets. The ugly and desperate
face: roughly 700 million people (1 to 10) lack access to safe water.
Have an idea of what's coming in recycling and waste management with this video, from my Youtube Chanel
On the bright side, the third industrial revolution creates
new, unimaginable opportunities for making sustainability a cornerstone of each
and every industrial sector. Drones, smart sensors, robots, 3D printers and
driverless cars will gradually become mainstream, although with different
rates. Genetic engineering, industrial biology and emerging biotechnologies
will soon create an enormous footprint in our world. The science of materials
is promising a plethora of new “fit for purpose” composite materials. Mobile
phones, big data systems and digital - social networks have already transformed
our daily lives. The circular economy concept is an effort to redefine recycling
and waste management during the third industrial revolution. The dialectics are
clear: circular economy will never be possible without the technological advances
of the third industrial revolution and the third industrial revolution is
really driven by the resource challenge. But, as the recent ISWA’s Task Forceon Resources reports highlighted, we have a long distance to travel until we
will have clean cycles of selected materials.
On the dark side of the moon, as the recent “Global Waste Management Outlook” (GWMO)
report revealed roughly 2-3 billion people lack the most elementary waste
services. The recent ISWA’s “Wasted Health: The tragic case of dumpsites” report mentions that
the health impacts of dumpsites are worst than malaria in India, Indonesia and
Philippines.Of course, many developing
countries have made good progress on collection coverage and controlled
disposal since 1990 and some of them have developed good recycling rates. But
still, the major problem remains. Due to the rapid urbanization wave (estimated
to 250-300,000 people per day) and the gradual increase of the income per
capita in the developing world, the waste generation rate runs much faster that
our capacity to deliver solutions. A 2010 UNICEF study (Progress on Sanitation & Drinking Water: 2010 Update) shows
that urbanization is running at least 30% faster than sanitation delivered and
I bet that the gap is really wider for waste management services.
The reality is that, even now, there are parts of our
world that have not been so much affected by the second industrial revolution.
So no one expects that the third industrial revolution would soon transform the
whole planet. But there are two particularities. The first is the pace of
change. The current industrial revolution is based on technologies that follow
exponential rather than linear paths of development – practically it means that
the change that is coming will be too big and too fast. The second is that with
the current shift of power (from global “north” to global “south”) and the
continuously growing global interconnectivity, the current industrial
revolution will affect mostly the developing world (roughly 40% of the planet’s
population). This means that the poorer part of the world will benefit much
more than the richer one, for the first time in the history of industrial
revolutions.
In this fast changing landscape, where disruption of
traditional industries will very soon be the rule and not the exception, the
recycling and waste management industry seems unprepared for radical changes. Speaking frankly, what is needed is not a good, even if complicated and expensive, adaptation plan.
What is coming is a whole new redefinition of what is called waste and how it will
be managed. And the ones that will not get it, sooner or later, will be wiped out from the third industrial revolution.
