Circular Economy needs more Waste Management than linear one!

While the circular economy saga is becoming mainstream (I have already written my concerns regarding circular economy in this blog), the future of waste management is somehow blurred between circular economy and zero waste concepts. And there are many people that believe that there is no future for the waste management industry as circular economy approaches will be gradually expanded and cover the most important economic sectors.

There is nothing as misleading as this belief and allow me to explain why. First of all, the circular economy concepts, as well as the zero waste approaches, require much more and not less waste management. Their implementation requires advanced management of multiple streams of materials, before they become waste but after they have been discarded from the main production. Those streams must be as clean as possible in order to have high added value, so advanced treatment for removal of residuals will be required, in one or another way. And of course, there will be always residuals looking for appropriate final sinks, including energy recovery where this is possible.

A second reason is less obvious. Circular economy concepts are fueled (besides other) by the problems and challenges that were identified during decades of waste management progress, especially in developed countries. Gradually, through positive and negative experiences, we realized that no matter how advanced would be the waste management and recycling progress, it is the production and consumption of products that finally determine the waste management dynamics and the increasing waste volumes. But no matter how circular the economy will be, since production and consumption of goods as well as their diversification will continue to rise, there will always be new waste management problems and a permanent dynamic towards cleaner, more efficient, faster and safer waste management. I am sorry but waste is simply a daily product of the urban metabolism…

If those reasons are not enough to persuade you that circular economy needs more (but also better and different) and not less waste management, have a look at Veolia’s contribution to circular economy’s discussion (see at http://www.veolia.com/en/veolia-group/media/news/circular-economy-sustainable-opportunity ).  It is more than clear that one of the biggest waste management multinationals faces circular economy as an opportunity and not as a threat. And it is not the only one, because there are more good reasons for such an approach.

Circular economy concepts, if successfully applied, will create a landscape where waste and resource management will be integrated not only on global, national or regional level but also on each and every supply chain. This means that waste management will be internalized in the relevant industrial processes, as a key-component of them.  This is a new business challenge for an industry that knows how to make money from residual streams. And for some people, the business case will be similar to the software. Software development and applications are required in each and every modern industry and they are becoming a core element of it – this is a blue ocean for the software industry, despite the fact that most of the big companies have internalized their software applications and they have their own IT departments.  A similar case should be expected for waste management too.

Last but not least, it is always good to remember that the waste management sector makes already an important contribution by delivering closed loops for specific materials, recovering energy potential and ensuring safe disposal for the non-recyclable part. We are far away from being “as good as we can”, but I believe that the sector’s resource added value is rather underestimated. It is time to justify it in a better and more integrated way.

So keep your eyes open, because within next months, ISWA’s Task Force on Resource Management will publish its report on resource efficiency and the role of the waste management sector. For a starter have a look at http://www.iswa.org/iswa/iswa-groups/task-forces/task-force-details/tf/show_detail/task-force-on-resource-management/

For the main course, join ISWA 2015 conference in Antwerp (http://iswa2015.org)

Circular economy and technology

Source: Tim Heffernan, here

This is the third post regarding circular economy. In my first one (see here) I argued that before discussing the details we have to deal with the concept of circular economy and I put some conceptual questions. In my second one (see here) I discussed circular economy and economic growth and my conclusion was that circular economy can’t resolve (or it can only partially resolve) the conflict between environmental impacts and economic activity, even if it is 100% adopted worldwide because there are planetary, natural limits to growth. I finished this post writing that “Circular economy approaches are helpful and useful, but they are limited (and at the same time stimulated) by limits to growth.”

In this third post, I will deal with the relation between circular economy and technology development, or to put it in another way to study the dynamics between technology development and resource management.

We all know that any naturally or physically growing system can be understood in terms of stocks, flows and feedback. Stocks are accumulations of things that change over time through the interaction between inflows and outflows. Feedback occurs when changes in the size or composition of a stock affect the rates of inflows and/or outflows (feedback maybe positive or negative). As it has been proven, in a bounded natural environment, the balance between inflows and outflows is determined by different principles for renewable and non-renewable resources (for more see G. Turner “A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality”, Global Environmental Change 18 (2008) 397– 411 here).

Consider non-renewable resources like oil, rare metals, phosphorus etc. I think that if we use the example of oil, we can better understand the role of technology from a systemic point of view, exactly as it has been discussed by Donella Meadows at her masterpiece “Thinking in Systems – a Primer” (for more see here). 

So, when a new oilfield is exploited, part of the profits gained is invested in establishing new additional oil wells, something that results to additional oil extraction. This leads to more profits and extra investment in oil wells. This is a typical positive (or reinforcing) feedback and the economics work in such a way that the easiest (and less costly) oil resources are firstly depleted. In any case, there is a time where extraction will become more difficult and costly, so the expected benefits will be lower than the costs involved for oilfield exploitation and this will reduce the investments in new oil wells. This is a typical negative feedback or a balancing one. But this will also make oil scarcer, so its prices will rise and so more money will be available for investments in difficult and costly oilfields. This description outlines how different types of feedback determine the system’s behavior for short or long periods. Studying the history of oil exploitation certainly demonstrates the political, social and economic importance of those feedbacks (for more on this topic I strongly suggest Sonia Shah’s book “Crude: The story of oil”, see here). 

Source: New York Tines here

Nonetheless, what is the final result? As Meadows has shown and Sonia Shah demonstrated a. the potential lifetime of a newly discovered oil field (under the initial conditions and scale of operations) is substantially reduced as a result of the system dynamics b. oil companies invest for new fields in some of the most impoverished and unstable areas of the world and c. new technological advances (e.g. deep water drilling) are making new, very difficult and costly oil fields available but with substantial environmental and health risks.

In this point, I think it is useful to mention one of the key-conclusions made by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling in its report "Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Spill and the Future of Offshore Drilling," Report to the President, January 2011 (for a summary see here).

“Scientific understanding of environmental conditions in sensitive environments in deep Gulf waters, along the region’s coastal habitats, and in areas proposed for more drilling, such as the Arctic, is inadequate. The same is true of the human and natural impacts of oil spills.”

It does seem to me that the concept of natural limits to growth is here again and technology can’t overcome it, no matter how advanced it will be. And the reason for that is that as our technologies become ever more advanced and complex, they try to resolve problems in much more complex and less understood conditions. The consequence of this exponentially increasing complexity is that “complex systems fail in complex ways”, which are not predictable!

From a resource point of view, further more advanced and efficient technologies make new oil fields available (e.g. fracking and its impact in US economy). So this provides more oil and maybe it expands the time where oil will be available, with a certain environmental cost (for details see here). Nevertheless, the big picture is that those technological advances are making the depletion of oil resources faster!

Source: here

It is not so difficult to prove that the role of technological advances is similar to renewable resources too; the main difference is that renewable resources like fish population are controlled by the balance between inflows and outflows and not but stock availability (scientifically we say that they are flow limited, while non-renewable are stock limited).

I believe the example of oil highlights the role of technology from a resource point of view. Technology developments can’t overcome limits to growth and at the same time they accelerate the process of depletion of non-renewable resources because stocks are finally limited, despite the temporal system dynamics and pricing. And certainly, as technology complexity grows, environmental and health risks are becoming more and more difficult to be managed.

The term “throughput” is frequently used to describe the flow of energy and matter from ecological resources through the economy and back to ecological sinks. At this point, I will use the phrasing from the article “A systems and thermodynamics perspective on technology in the circular economy” (written by Ramelt & Chrisp, available at Real World Economics Review, issue 68, see here).

“For industrial systems, a low throughput of matter and energy implies a smaller ecological footprint and greater life expectancy and durability of goods and infrastructure; a high throughput implies more depletion of resources that will need to be renewed and more waste that will need to be disposed of (Meadows and Wright 2008). System dynamics and thermodynamics tell us that a tolerable rate of throughput and entropic transformation is ultimately dictated by the natural system, not by economics or engineering.

A possible task for engineering, within limits, would be to maximise the durability of stocks by minimising inflows of low entropy natural resources and by minimising outflows of high entropy waste and emissions. The role that industrial societies have assigned to technology is, however, much more Herculean. We have asked it to simultaneously and boundlessly minimise environmental impacts and maximise economic growth.”.

The direct consequence of this analysis is that as long as we maintain high throughput, as long as we keep high material and energy consumption patterns (as nations, industries and citizens too) we can’t expect technology to manage the existing biophysical limits of the planet, independently of how circular we will make the economy. And the waste generation will keep growing because waste is the product of a high throughput and technologies can only accelerate its generation. 

Circular economy and growth

What is the definition of circular economy? We discuss a lot about it, but I am afraid that not all of us have the same definition. It is difficult to find an exact definition, but I feel that combining the following two we can have a good idea.

According to the Ellen Macarthur foundation, the circular economy aims for a “transformation of products and their associated material flows such that they form a supportive relationship with ecological systems and future economic growth”.

In Wikipedia we get some more details “The circular economy is a generic term for an industrial economy that is, by design or intention, restorative and in which material flows are of two types, biological nutrients, designed to reenter the biosphere safely, and technical nutrients, which are designed to circulate at high quality without entering the biosphere.”

So allow me to say two issues. At first, circular economy aims to create a supportive relationship between ecological systems and economic growth. At second, the concept is built on two material flows, the biological and the technical ones. This post will address the first of those two points. The discussion regarding the biological and technical nutrients will follow.

I would state that the concept of circular economy is one more effort to bridge the widening gap between the predominant production and consumption patterns of our world, especially the developed one, and the continuously restricting limits posed by resource availability and environmental quality. In this view, circular economy has many common points with concepts like natural capitalism, industrial ecology and cradle-to-cradle. All of those concepts are based on a more or less same, old principle: with the right technology development and innovation, our world can achieve continuous economic growth without substantial or irreversible environmental impacts.

What is rather new in the circular economy approach is the emphasis given to suitable business models and social interfaces and not just to technology development and application. In this way, circular economy is one step forward because it represents a more systemic approach than cradle-to-cradle and natural capitalism.

There are two elementary and conceptual questions to be raised. My problem is that when we discuss about circular economy we consider the answers to those questions as given, which is not the case, as I will attempt to explain. Here are the two questions.

Question 1: is our earth capable to sustain a continuous economic growth (for all the population and not just for 20% of it) or there are planetary limits to growth, which must be respected?

Question 2: what is the role of technology development in relation with economic growth and environmental impacts? More specifically, what are the expected results by technology development that leads to more efficient industrial production and improved resource utilization, even with less environmental impacts (although this is not always the case, as we all know)?

Let’s start with question 1, which I will call briefly “limits to growth”. I think that we have already a lot of evidence that there are very important global limits to growth. Let me quote some of them.

Declining oil reserves and Peak Oil concept offers a lot to understand the planetary growth limits (for more here ). As Fatih Birol, Chief Economist EIA, put it in 2008 “We have to leave oil before it leaves us”.

Several important metals are in a depletion phase (e.g. gallium and indium) while others are going to be depleted soon (e.g. zinc and platinum between 2020-2030) – for more here  . Especially the scarcity of rare metals is seriously hindering the green and the electronics industry (for more see the report “Rare Earth Metals Scarcity: A 'Ticking Time Bomb' for the World?” here .

Industrialized fishing has already reached its global limits and we have passed to the declining phase of specific fishes’ populations. Fish stocks across the world are declining faster than feared, with the smallest fisheries faring worst. Doing nothing will result in an almost complete depletion of salt water fishes around 2050, as it was documented by Boris Worm at his emblematic work “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services”, (Science, Nov. 3, 2006; vol. 314: pp 787-790 here).

Of course, there is a certain CO2 limit. Oceans and terrestrial ecosystems absorbed roughly 315 of a total 555 gigatonnes of accumulated anthropogenic carbon emissions in the period 1750-2011. And while CO2 emissions continue to grow, the absorbing capacity of carbon reservoirs is limited and will probably tail off (see the excellent paper “Increase in observed net carbon dioxide uptake by land and oceans during the past 50 years”, Nature 488, 70–72 (02 August 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11299 here).

In 2009, the Stockholm Resilience Centre published a report on Planetary Boundaries. According to the estimates of an international group of scientists, five of the nine crucial boundaries have already been overstepped, namely climate change, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, chemical dispersion and nitrogen cycle (for more here ).

I can write much more examples of undeniable, specific limits to growth. However, the conclusion remains the same. There are definite limits to economic growth; specific planetary natural barriers limit the economic expansion.

The logical consequence is that since there are limits to growth, any efforts for a “supportive relationship” between ecosystems and economic growth are certainly restricted by the limits to growth. Or in another phrasing, circular economy can’t resolve (or it can only partially resolve) the conflict between environmental impacts and economic activity, even if it is 100% adopted worldwide.

Despite this limitation, the adoption of circular economy policy approaches (which has become mainstream as we all know) is certainly helpful and environmentally useful. After all, waste prevention, reuse, recycle and recovery activities are more and more crucial for certain materials just because the limits to growth exist!

So let me summarize my first conclusion. Circular economy approaches are advantageous and useful, but they are limited (and at the same time stimulated) by limits to growth. Let’s see what are the consequences of technology development at the next post.

Circular economy and waste management: questions to be answered

Recently European Commission (EC) announced that it is scrapping plans to introduce a Circular Economy Package. Instead, it will launch a 'broader and more ambitious' waste package next year. The draft circular economy package was aiming to achieve a proposed 70 per cent recycling and reuse target for 2030, as well as a requirement for Member States to recycle 80% of packaging waste by 2030.

This announcement was faced as a step backwards from many stakeholders, including, Environmental Services Association (ESA, UK), Municipal Waste Europe and Friends of Earth but also companies like IKEA and Unilever who officially expressed their disagreement with the EC’s plans to postpone the draft package. On the other hand, CEWEP hopes that “we would like to see an ambitious approach to phasing out landfilling as soon and as much as possible so that the full potential of waste as a resource would be unleashed, by increasing recycling and energy generation from the remaining waste”, as CEWEP’s Managing Director Ella Stengler said (see more here).  

The whole discussion seems to be controversial and somehow difficult for the waste management sector. This is why I fully support ISWA’s recent decision to establish a new Task Force on Resource Management to investigate the contribution that the Waste Management Sector can offer to the Circular Economy and to identify the barriers and challenges that need to be overcome to support the transition from waste management to resource management (for more see here).

However, my personal approach is that before getting into the details of the relationship between circular economy and waste management industry, we better examine carefully the concepts of circular and linear economy. Because I believe that the biggest problems and challenges regarding the circular economy are included in its own definition. And although there is no doubt regarding the high benefits of closed loops of materials and the extension of prevention and reuse practices, I have a lot of doubts regarding the circularity of political correctness that is related with circular economy and its impacts to sound waste management practices.

So I will put some conceptual questions and in next posts I will try to outline possible answers.

1. Are there biophysical limits to circular economy or a close to 100% circularity is possible? What can we learn from natural sciences and physics regarding circularities?

2. What is really new in circular economy? How circular economy is related with new materials, product design and consumption? Are we focusing on the business models or the technologies involved? Why is it so attractive for many big companies? How it is related with Big Data systems and the Internet of Things?

3. What we call “circular economy” is the same in developed and developing countries? Is linear economy outdated? Can we have a global uniform approach or circular economy is a privilege of the already rich countries?

4. W

hat a circular economy means for waste management? How it is related with zero waste efforts and recycling? Are landfills and waste treatment plants going to be eliminated? Finally, does circular economy means the end of the waste management industry, as we know it?

Well, I will try to outline some answers for discussion, starting from next week.

ORBIT Conference 2012: Global assessment for organic resources and waste management

 

This is a contibution by Anne Trémier, a colleague I met during the Summer School on Biological and Thermal Treatment of Municipal Solid Waste, in Napoli, Italy, 2-6 May 2011 (see http://www.iat.unina.it/summerschool/home.html). Anne is a researcher at IRSTEA (see http://www.irstea.fr/en/home-page ) and one of the organizers of the upcoming ORBIT 2012 Conference which is dedicated to "Global assessment for organic resources and waste management: Assessment of technologies for optimal organics management processes and enlightened environmental policies". 

I am sure it will be one more succesful ORBIT conference and I will be there to join ORBIT's efforts. Here is what Anne wrote:

"During the last years, a big strength has been put on organic resources recovery in order to achieve our aspiration towards a "Recycling Society" and climate stabilisation. Energy, nutrients and organic matter needs have thus driven sustainable management of resources and wastes and promoted new technological developments. In this context, biological processing of organic wastes and the use of natural resources to recover nutrients as phosphorus, to produce soil improvers and to supply energy is of great interest. 

However rules on the management of organic resources waste are fragmented and the current legislation in Europe might be not sufficient to achieve the stated objectives of its effective management. Moreover there is an open question on the tools that can be used to assess the efficiency of organic resources and waste management systems and lead to the adequate processes selection. Especially the increasing use of Life Cycle Assessment tools has to be carefully addressed with a special focus on the considered indicators and the local applicability of the results.

Following the ORBIT conferences tradition, ORBIT2012 will deal with all aspects of organic resources and waste management with a special focus on the assessment of technologies with environmental, social and economical point of view. A large place will be given to climate change, waste management assessment and decision tools. Traditional themes as energy recovery (Biofuels, biogas, hydrogen production), biological treatments (composting and anaerobic digestion) and also mechanical biological treatment still remain central issues that have to be discussed in order to improve technologies and product quality, especially for land application. 

More local management systems such as home and community composting will also be discussed as they may represent solutions that have to be considered in an integrated organic waste management plan. Special emphasis will also be laid on EU policies and strategies for sustainable organic waste management. The conference will present high quality and innovative research in all the aforementioned topics and will include oral presentations (about 180), poster presentations (about 50) and a specific workshop: “From Waste to Product – Sustainable Management of Organic Resources in Europe » .

We will be pleased to welcome you to the next ORBIT in June 12^th – 15^th 2012 in Rennes, France ( www.orbit2012.fr )". 

Fashionistas push for waste prevention

Source: fashionindustrynetwork.com

Last 10 years we watch a global shift from end of pipe waste management to waste prevention and reuse concepts. This shift clearly moves us closer to resource management optimization processes rather than the typical waste management activities. It concerns more industrial supply chains than the waste management industry and the usual end of pipe solutions.


But at the same time it provides a new practical view on how we deal with waste. It helps us a lot to understand waste as an indication of inefficient production and consumption patterns. In other terms, it helps us to understand that Waste is a Choice, as my friend Maarten Goorhuis (ISWA STC Vice-Chair and Chair of the ISWA Working Group on Recycling and Waste Minimization) usually says starting his presentations about waste prevention.


A good example of that way of thinking is given by some initiatives in the textile & clothing manufacturing sector. The real importance of them is that they try to combine effectiveness in waste prevention by utilizing personal attitudes and behavioral trends. Let’s see more details.


We all know that rapidly changing fashions increase the production and consumption of textiles and clothing. And definitely, they also increase the amount of end of life clothes that are driven to waste, in one or another way. Despite improvements in the environmental impacts in the manufacture of textile and clothing over the last 25 years, the overall volume of production and consumption of these products has increased. The relocation of manufacturing from Western countries to Asian nations and more efficient production has reduced the cost of clothing and textiles, but this has had the unintended consequence of increasing consumption and counteracting some of the environmental benefits of new manufacturing technologies.


In addition, the fast cycles of fashion and deliberately planning products to have a limited lifespan have shortened the life cycle of textiles and clothing. Garments have become cheaper, the quality reduced and clothes are typically worn for only a short time before disposal. Although reuse and recycling of clothing has also increased, this only partly offsets the increased levels of textile consumption, the proliferation of textile waste, and the environmental and social impacts, (such as where and how fibres are cultivated) associated with higher volumes of textiles and clothing production. 



A recent study (Niinimäki, K., Hassi, L. (2011) Emerging design strategies in sustainable production and consumption of textiles and clothing. Journal of Cleaner Production 19: 1876-1883) provided the suggestion that a more sustainable production and consumption of clothing could be achieved if consumer values are used to rethink design and business strategies. A good example could be an increased personalization of clothing that could increase both consumer attachment to products and their useful lifetime.


The study explored different design strategies that increase the lifespan of textiles and clothing by making the consumer the centre of the innovation processes. It argues that innovative thinking about how consumers experience and value textiles and clothes is needed for more sustainable production and consumption.


For example, the use of a product could be extended if it is designed to be personalized. This would allow consumers to develop an emotional attachment with the garment or textile and can be achieved by mass customization of products using fast digital manufacturing technologies that enable consumers to select from a variety of styles and colors to design their own look. Digital textile printers, embroidery and laser cutting machines can design products tailored to an individual’s specifications.


The manufacture of ‘halfway products’, for example, kits that offer consumers the opportunity to creatively assemble (and repair) the product could also increase attachment and usage, as could clothing designed with detachable parts that can be customized by the consumer.
In addition, designers can co-create products with consumers to increase attachment to the product, for example, through the internet, with consumers making the final design decisions. Services that focus on consumer needs can also be used to extend the lifetime use of textiles and clothing and postpone product replacement. For example, high-quality garments that can be used in renting, leasing, lending or sharing schemes; and services that modify the garments can all be offered. New business opportunities could be found in this switch to a services-orientated economy; manufacturers can offer higher quality garments, increase customer satisfaction and extend the use of the product. 


At least, we hope that this may be a succesful initiative - after all if waste prevention becomes trendy, there will be positive impacts worldwide, especially in the global interconnected cities where fashion plays a crucial role...

Waste management in global cities

This is the first post of two that address the issue of waste management in global cities and megacities.I will try to resume some of my major findings during last two years. There will be a special event dedicated to waste management and global cities at the World Cities Summit 2012 and soon the whole program will be available - as far as I know top speakers are included. 

My research was in the framework of the ISWA project “Globalization and waste management” which is going to be presented in Florence 2012 Conference (see the excellent web-site) for the first time. ISWA;s Task Force has worked in four different packages namely a. megacities and waste management b. informal sector as a global stakeholder c. global recycling markets and d. international aid tools and their utilization.

Although the project is still on - going and there is a lot of work to be done until we will have complete it, there are some key-issues that I have concluded, especially about  global cities, which means cities that are highly interconnected in the globalization network. Some of the things I learnt have been already presented during ISWA 2011 conference in Daewoo, South Korea (see ISWA's knowledge base and search for megacities). 

Studying the triangle “Globalization – Megacities – Waste Management”  my major conclusion is that a waste management system in a global city or a megacity is much more than a local system because a. It is part of the global network of material flows b. It is highly affected by global consumerism trends and c. it is directly influenced by global regulations and initiatives related to waste management. Of course someone would easily complete that this is also true for other smaller or less globalized cities but this does not affect the core of the conclusion.

That complex dynamics between global and local markets, global and local governance, global and local stakeholders is a key issue for understanding waste management in  global cities.

As a result in megacities and global cities institutional development, social support and participation and financial sustainability (or the Software elements of waste management) are becoming more and more important especially for the success of recycling, reuse and waste prevention initiatives. They are highly sensitive to the continuous change of the neighborhoods and the appearance of “cities within the city”, especially to the poorest ones where inadequate waste management practices create serious health and environmental risks. Clearly, the Software elements control the social behaviour of citizens and thus they are the most important for the success of recycling, reuse and waste prevention programs.

It seems that a major barrier comes from the complex interactions between the hundreds stakeholders involved in a global city waste management. Another serious barrier comes from the lack of initiatives to integrate informal sector to waste management activities. 

From those remarks, it is obvious that the overall performance of a global city waste management system results from continuous interactions between global and local markets, emerging social behaviour, city governance, global and local stakeholders, city growth etc. And those interactions are hardly described by the traditional waste management approaches which are based on engineering and logistics.

The problem might be more general. As long as we face SWM as a matter of appropriate storage, collection, transfer, treatment and disposal and the main effort was to minimise environmental and health impacts, engineering and logistic tools were sufficient to plan and implement waste management systems. But today, resource management and social behaviour are becoming an organic part of any waste management system and they are essential to address increasing recycling rates and better quality of recyclables, participation of industrial stakeholders, eco-design initiatives and closed loops of products and materials.

Consequently, engineering and logistic tools are not enough to plan and deliver waste management systems in global cities. Especially in a megacity, the overall waste management system should be considered as “complex system”, which means a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties (behaviour among the possible properties) not obvious from the properties of the individual parts.

Complexity theory and Complex Systems Science (CSS) is a relatively new field of research focused on systemic understanding, self-organization, irreducibility, emerging patterns and properties and non-linear behaviour. Complexity science has been rapidly evolved during the last 20 years for the study of complex physical, biological and social systems. Cities as a whole may be considered as emerging entities existing near a critical point of self organization, far from equilibrium and qualitatively different from their constituent residents and subsystems.

Waste management systems in global cities should be studied using complexity theory and complex systems science tools because:

• The overall performance of a megacity waste management system is the result of complex interactions between global and local stakeholders, global and local material flows, global and local recycling markets, global and local governance etc.

• Effective recycling, waste prevention and reuse programs are of high importance for a megacity since they improve self-resilience and relief waste management systems. However, those programs are directly linked with social behaviour and the emerging system performance is a result of thousands or millions daily interactions.

•  In global cities and megacities, local patterns and heterogeneity are the rule in waste management and micro-local dynamics have an impact at the system performance through their aggregate effects but also because they influence urban change iteratively through local connections and impacts.

• In metropolitan areas there are a number of councils, utilities, regional and governmental authorities, NGOs, private sector companies, informal sector unions, municipal utilities etc. Each of these entities is operating according the rules of limited awareness and jurisdiction, and self-interest and with selected connections to other entities. The dynamics of stakeholders’ interaction in megacities cannot be predicted or modelled with the usual information tools 

But is it any easy and practical way to manage Complexity in global cities? Or the ideas above are just theoretical approaches? The answer will arrive at the next post