OnePlus, Nintendo smartphone and Microsoft Lumia 950 : why the term waste is already redefined!

Just have a look at the speed with which new, unbelievable powerful mobile phones are arriving. 

1. Chinese company OnePlus is hosting a launch event on October 29 in India (and other countries) where it will - in all probability- take the wraps off its new affordable Mini device, touted as the OnePlus X. The OnePlus X is expected to be a Mini variant of the OnePlus 2, and will therefore carry a lower price tag in comparison. There have been numerous rumours around this aspect of the OnePlus X.

2. Microsoft is all set to launch its recently announced Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL Windows 10 smartphones in India in the month of November. The company is planning to bring the Lumia 950 smartphone to India at a price of Rs 38,000, while the Lumia 950 XL will be carrying a price tag of Rs 43,000, approximately. 

3. Nintendo announced the first smartphone - game, developed in partnership with mobile service company DeNA , will be an app called Miitomo, which will allow users to create Mii characters and exchange facts about themselves with other players. Of course, it requires advanced mobile phones and fast processing units.

Well, if they continue like this, very soon our 2 years old mobile phones will become... waste! And I am sure that this will be the case, as the speed of the third industrial revolution is getting higher and the pace of change in certain industrial sectors, IT and mobile phones are certainly two of them, will get faster and faster. 

This is why I insist that we have to be ready for a more radical transformation: the term waste, very soon, will be completely redefined as a result of the third industrial revolution - this video at the beginning of the post, from a recent key-note I delivered in Buenos Aires, explains why. 

Biggest tech deal ever, Microsoft Surface and the global challenges of waste management

Few days before the largest tech deal ever was announced, the one between DELL and EMC, I was asked to participate at a radio show at LA Talk radio a growing internet radio that is irreverent, cool and entertaining also. The show held on October 2 and it was about the global challenges related to waste management and the possibilities for a zero waste society.

My host was Diana Dehm, a curious social entrepreneur with a big vision and passion for connecting people from around the world to create our sustainable planet in the most non-traditional ways. She holds the Sustainability News & Entertainment Radio and you can find all her radio shows plus many other interesting materials at her website. Interestingly, she rubs the very successful project Trash your Back, a fun, high visibility 5-day campaign driving awareness and education on our own personal trash impact.

You can find the whole radio show here - I hope you will enjoy it

I found it really challenging to have such a discussion on waste management at the same days someone commented that "...according to the engineers, a full-scale quantum processor would have major applications in the finance, security, and healthcare sectors, allowing the identification and development of new medicines by greatly accelerating the computer-aided design of pharmaceutical compounds; the development of new, lighter and stronger materials spanning consumer electronics to aircraft; and faster information searching through large databases".

As I am writing those lines, the first review of Microsoft Surface first look - review has been already published, to my understanding this will be another step towards the new modular design of laptops.

And I am thinking, how far is the waste management sector from the third industrial revolution that happens right here, right now? How we can move inside this revolution and utilise it? Well, this is my understanding: either the waste management industry will be tuned to the pace of change of the third industrial revolution or it will be gradually undermined by the waves of social and techno innovation that are coming.

Wasted Health: dumpsites are global health emergency

At the same time the world makes huge steps to use mobile phones for health protection (as it the recent case where mobile phone records can be used to predict the geographical spread and timing of Dengue epidemics - See more here), important elementary problems that concern billions are still ignored. And of course we are all happy that the declaration for an Embola free Africa by the end of 2015, but looking closer it seems that the roots for pandemics are still growing in many cases in Africa, as its dumpsites are getting bigger and more widespread. 

Well, yesterday ISWA launched my recent report on the tremendous health problems that are generated from dumpsites - you can find and download the full report here and the press release here.

The video below describes briefly the report's highlights and captures its spirit.

First of all, the main outcome of the report is that dumpsites have become a global health emergency and not just an important environmental issue - its impacts influence the lives of billions of people, directly and indirectly. Some more comments:

1. The health consequences from dumpsites are not as dramatic than we all thought - they are much more worse and they are getting worse day by day just because the waste that is brought to dumpsites is increasing continuously, especially in the developing world, due to urbanisation, increase of the GDP/cap and the rise of the new middle class with its own intensive consumption patterns.

2. There are countries like Indonesia, Philippines and India where scientific evidence shows that the health impacts posed by dumpsites are higher than the ones posed by malaria! This is an unbelievable development, which shows that underestimating the waste management challenges creates a new health landscape dominated by dumpsites.

3. The rising e-waste stream is not yet fully studied and understood in terms of its health and environmental impacts - however all the available studies demonstrate new and very high health risks - in the report you can find a lot of references from China and SE Asia that document the impacts posed by dumping e-waste.

4. Using some elementary calculations, it seems that the annual cost of the health impacts posed by dumpsites are in the order of billions or decades of billions per year - using 50% of this amount of money for helping developing countries resolve their waste management problems will have positive economic, environmental and health impacts on the long-term and save many thousands lives immediately.

There is an urgent need for action by the international community  - as a good friend told me recently, our message for decision makers must be as simple as this "you can't say that you don't know".

Special thanks to David Newman, ISWA's president, for his contribution. Many thanks to Niki Mavropoulos (Waste Atlas manager) for her extensive research and acknowledgements to my colleagues Costas Velis (prof. The University of Leeds), Vivek Agraval (Chair of ISWA's Working Group on Collection) and Nikos Rigas (D-Waste graphic's designer) for their ideas and practical help. 

Back to school: Trend #3: SWM industry should study thoroughly E-waste management

Since the kids, in most parts of the world, are preparing themselves to go back to schools, after weeks or months of vacations, I believe it is the right time for computer and the waste management industries to study their lessons from the current E-waste management status. And I believe that those lessons are elementary for the future of waste management and recycling - so this is Trend #3: E-waste management. And the reason is because E-waste management includes all the dimensions of the future problems: rapid change of materials and products, fast consumption, valuable resource recovery, serious environmental and health impacts, multinational non-state giants, global conventions  and a conflict between developed and developing worlds. In brief, the situation goes like this. 

Although China stock market is at the centre of recent discussions (e.g. see Dow's free-fall), China's problems by inappropriate E-waste management might be even more serious than the problems of its stock market. The title CNN used is correct "China: The electronic wastebasket of the world".

According the most recent statistics by STEP (Solving The E-waste Problem) initiative, in 2014 roughly 42 million tones of E-waste were generated. The global production of E-waste is continuously rising and it will be exponentially increased as developing economies grow and new technologies are developed.

For any given country, the total number of computers and other potential E-waste items is strongly correlated with the country's GDP, because electrical and electronic items are essential for the functioning of all but the most primitive economies. But the main problem is not their rising generation but their inappropriate management and the associated illegal exports - recycling and dumping practices, mainly at India, SE Asia and China. 

Despite the many international efforts to resolve the problem, E-waste management is becoming an emblematic failure of our modern societies as it combines a. rapid and continuous technological progress in manufacturing and process power b. fast consumption and rapid change of products or their versions and c. an unprepared waste management system which finally pushes e-waste to SE Asia for environmentally harmful management. 

Contamination associated with E-waste has already caused considerable environmental degradation in poor countries and negatively affected the health of the people who live there. 

The rapidly growing literature and evidence on the serious environmental and health impacts posed by current management practices in China and India is a certain signal for the importance of the problem.  Thus, E-waste should be considered as a global health emergency too. For the available scientific evidence you can check the article "Health consequences of exposure to e-waste: a systematic review"

There is still limited knowledge on the ecological effects, human health risks and remediation options for some E-waste contaminants, such as Li and Sb, since they are not normally environmental pollutants.   But this is not hopeful at all, in contrast, there are many reasons to be afraid of our limited knowledge.

Now, why do I believe that the solutions that will be formulated in E-waste will define future waste management trends? Simply, because E-waste is becoming a so emblematic problem that needs an emblematic solution too. If governments, waste management companies and of course, most of all, the big and powerful gadgets' producers (Apple, Samsung, Google etc.) are going to create viable recycling and resource recovery networks for this global problem, then this will be used as a patterns for other, similar, universal waste streams. If this will not be the case, then sooner or later, the current disastrous management of E-waste will destroy the reputation of the companies that produce gadgets. And this will impact, certainly, their products distribution and popularity. And of course, there is no solution without redesign of the main products, the fourth and maybe the most important R in this case, after Reuse, Recycle, Recover

Instead of conclusions, I feel that rich countries have self-interest in mitigating the negative environmental effects of E-waste because it will negatively affect the quality and quantity of food and manufactured goods that are imported from poor countries.  Let's hope they will act on time...