Between the Lines: Speed Dating is Not a Waste of Time As Executive Leads Way

By George Kerevan

I WANT you to image a pile of black plastic rubbish bags of the sort you put out for the bin men. Except this refuse mountain is as high as a Munro and weighs 12 million tons. We make one of these Munros every year. With more thantwo million households in Scotland, we put out over 150 million rubbish bags every year. That’s nearly 2.5 tons of waste for each of us.

Most of this rubbish ends up in a big hole in the ground. Because we are running out of places to dig more rubbish holes, the Executive has given local authorities extra cash to boost household recycling. My life is now dominated by trying to remember which plastic recycling container to put out on which days.

This initiative is very commendable, but here’s another thought: only about two million tons of Scotland’s waste is produced by private individuals. Most of the rubbish is commercial. Put another way, every year Scottish businesses are throwing away ten million tons of materials and chemicals that they have willingly paid for. Why would they want to bury all those pound notes in a big hole?

Economists have invented a neat concept called transactions costs. In a typical marketplace, buyers and sellers have to find each other, discover what is on offer and haggle over a deal. This process is not costless. Normally you have to spend time and money offering your wares or finding a supplier.

High transactions costs, not a disregard for the environment, are the real culprits responsible for all those landfill sites in Scotland. If it is more expensive to find a taker for unused by- products of my business (old computers, chemical ash, etc.) than it is to throw them away, then I’ll call waste disposal.

But suppose we could find a way of reducing the transactions costs and thereby allow companies to turn waste into extra business? If we can create a genuine market in trading or recycling waste products, then Scotland gains twice over: once when companies improve their bottom line by turning waste into profit. And secondly, when we cut taxes because the public refuse disposal system can be cut back (ie we need less landfill).

This is exactly what the Executive and Scottish Enterprise have been trying to do. They have launched a fascinating experiment called the Scottish Industrial Symbiosis Programme (SISP). It exists to facilitate the trading of unused resources between organisations and industries – frequently across normal sector boundaries. SISP is nothing less than a speed-dating agency which matches companies with unwanted by-products to other companies that can make use of stuff that would otherwise get dumped. SISP effectively eliminates the pesky transactions costs that stop firms dealing direct.

Fortunately the Executive has subcontracted the running of SISP to Thirdwave, Scotland’s leading private environmental management consultancy, thereby ensuring this stays all about the bottom line rather than beads and sandals.

The good news is that SISP works. Through a series of regional gatherings for interested companies, many firms have discovered mutually beneficial associations. For instance, Norbord, a Canadian- owned multinational, is the biggest manufacturer of wood-based panels in the UK. Which means Norbord has lots of wood shavings to throw away at their Stirling plant. That was until SISP paired them with Scottish Water Waste Services, which needed organic feedstock to produce commercial compost. Now Norbord is saving the cost of disposing of 3,000 tons of surplus wood fibre, while Scottish Water Waste Services has raw materials for its Cumbernauld plant.

Another example is Spruce Carpets in Govan. As a rule, when commercial office premises fit new flooring, they just send their mucky old carpets straight to landfill. Now, thanks to a SISP- brokered marriage, big companies pass on old carpets to Spruce, for cleaning as new and supply to low-income families.

Other deals include turning waste oils into biodiesel, recycling whisky-flavoured oak casks into furniture, and finding a commercial home for half a million tons of peat excavated during a big construction project.

The important question is: how long will it take to transform 12 million tons of Scottish waste into a self-sustaining business? Ideally, the SISP pilot scheme needs to be expanded to ensure every firm in Scotland is engaged. Then create a sort of industrial eBay and let companies do their own thing. It is also arguable that SISP needs to be UK-wide, if not Europe-wide, to generate the necessary economies of scale.

Back in the 1930s, the economist John Maynard Keynes suggested (ironically) that the government should bury jam jars full of pound notes as a way of creating jobs. Folk would hire the unemployed to dig up the money. Little did Keynes imagine that Scotland’s landfill sites are chouck full of profits, if you know where to look.

SISP can be contact through Gordon Black at sisp@thirdwave.org.uk.