Resourceful Waste Management

0 THE AMOUNT OF STUFF we throw away on our land, air and our water is becoming so staggering that the spectre of pollution will haunt every corporation in the country. There are two ways to go-we can go on the way we have been going and have taxes and government controls increase to dispose of wastes, or we can look at waste as a resource and the possible basis of huge, new industries. Either way-a new kind of economics will emerge-on the one hand, if industry does not tackle this with its own initiative and imagination, such burdens as taxes at the source and effluent taxes will be imposed. On the other hand, if we move toward a giant industry dedicated to the reuse of residues, we can not only keep our environment clean but do so on a productive basis. Really, an individual industry may find it hard to cope with a particular waste problem but an association of different industries can tackle the problem as a system. Symbiosis in biology in its simple form is where the tick birds ride on the rhinoceros' back and live on his parasites, thereby keeping him clean. Can we think up combinations of industrial symbiosis where different wastes can be combined at least to neutralize each other and at best to make something useful? Pollution alone is going to affect the whole economics of industry-from original design, to different marketing concepts, abolition of the consumer as we know him, coupling collection inlets with distribution outlets, mass disassembly as well as mass production, and reuse and stockpiling of discards, instead of disposal and urban renewal. An excess or overconcentration of anything can constitute or result in pollution. It is the excess or overconcentration of people that is the real pollution problem on earth. All of what is said below are the side effects of the major problem of people pollution. (Dr. Spilhaus then quoted the following excerpts, slightly amended, from the National Academy of Sciences special report on resources, titled Waste Management and Control.)