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Earth Science

Inside Finland's Plan To End All Waste by 2050 (time.com) 35

An anonymous reader shares a report: As natural resources diminish and the climate crisis grows more acute, the notion of a circular economy has been gaining traction around the globe. Most modern economies are linear -- they rest on a "take, make, waste" model in which natural resources are extracted, their valuable elements are transformed into products, and anything left over (along with the products themselves when they are no longer useful) is discarded as waste. In contrast, a circular economy replaces the extraction of resources with the transformation of existing products and essentially does away with the notion of waste altogether. A growing number of governments, from the municipal to the international, have thrown their weight behind the idea. The E.U. launched its action plan for the transition to a circular economy in 2015, then updated it in 2020 as part of the Green Deal to include initiatives that encourage companies to design products -- from laptops to jeans -- so that they last longer and can be more easily repaired. In February, the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding additional measures that would allow it to adopt a fully circular carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Some member states, including the Netherlands, have also drafted similar plans at the national level.

Among them, Finland stands out for the comprehensiveness of its approach. Back in 2016, it became the first to adopt a national "road map" to a circular economy -- a commitment it reaffirmed last year by setting targeted caps on natural-resource extraction. Like other nations, Finland supports entrepreneurship in creative reuse, or upcycling (especially in its important forestry industry), urges public procurements that rely on recycled and repurposed materials, and seeks to curb dramatically the amount of waste going to landfill. But from the beginning, the country of 5.5 million has also focused closely on education, training its younger generations to think of the economy differently than their parents and grandparents do. "People think it's just about recycling," says Nani Pajunen, a sustainability expert at Sitra, the public innovation fund that has spearheaded Finland's circular conversion. "But really, it's about rethinking everything -- products, material development, how we consume." To make changes at every level of society, Pajunen argues, education is key -- getting every Finn to understand the need for a circular economy, and how they can be part of it. A pilot program to help teachers incorporate the notion into curriculums in 2017 "just snowballed," says Pajunen. "By the end of the two years, 2,500 teachers around the country had joined the network -- far more than we had directly funded." Since then, studying the circular economy has taken on a life of its own, starting with the youngest.

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Inside Finland's Plan To End All Waste by 2050

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  • They are all moving to Sweden.
  • Spaceship Earth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by glatiak ( 617813 ) on Thursday February 10, 2022 @03:59PM (#62256871)

    Seems much too rational for the likes of us. The very idea of acknowledging that we live in a large but closed system and are well on our way to overwhelming the capacity of the natural world to reprocess our wastes. Going to be a tough trip for the throw the beercan out the window crowd. That is, of course, if they have any intent to survive the trip. Way to go Finland!

    • Re:Spaceship Earth (Score:4, Insightful)

      by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Thursday February 10, 2022 @04:20PM (#62256937) Journal
      This is a culture that is based on personal satisfaction instead of consumerism. The main tenet of consumerism is to make you feel bad about yourself and fill the hole by buying things.
      • by tirk ( 655692 )
        Way to make me feel bad, now I need to go out and buy something.
      • by swell ( 195815 )

        "This is a culture that is based on personal satisfaction instead of consumerism."

        - Good point. Let me add that my municipal area in the US has almost the same population as Finland, but it is vastly more diverse. Whites are a minority here and we speak 100 languages. We are somewhat polarized between the wealthy and the very poor with not much in between. Many are focused on survival and unaware of the world at large. For us to achieve agreement on any topic is difficult. We are much like the US at

      • maybe love is a negative form of hatred ... well finland has done stuff before, the dogs in the airport that sniff out covid while others would have had the procedure go on for 3 years to decide, in the mean time we're still waiting on the millennium norms (dont mention the milennium norms !) - so maybe its a good thing if sep countries take their own initiatives ... sweden seems to have a few too that go against continental policy ... somewhat interesting social experiments we all would LOVE to see where t
      • by teg ( 97890 )

        This is a culture that is based on personal satisfaction instead of consumerism. The main tenet of consumerism is to make you feel bad about yourself and fill the hole by buying things.

        Finnish culture based on personal satisfaction? Based on all the Finnish TV we saw back in the 70s and 80s (OK, this is a parody) [youtube.com], I'd rather say it's based on alcoholism, saunas, depression, and violence.

    • I used to think people were smarter than a slime mold in a bucket.

      I was wrong.
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Seems much too rational for the likes of us. The very idea of acknowledging that we live in a large but closed system and are well on our way to overwhelming the capacity of the natural world to reprocess our wastes. Going to be a tough trip for the throw the beercan out the window crowd. That is, of course, if they have any intent to survive the trip. Way to go Finland!

      Unfortunately, some of the beercan throwing crowd isn't doing it because they don't care, they're intentionally doing it because if they ca

  • by Anonymous Coward

    This is where research on thorium and other new reactor technologies can greatly help achieve not just net zero carbon emission, but net zero waste.

    For example, plastics which normally would just go into the environment could be thermally depolymerized, so even more toxic stuff like ABS or Bakelite could be "boiled" down into monomers. Stuff like fiberglass could be recycled with the resin turned back into monomer, and the glass part tossed into a furnace to be melted, and thus put in a usable state for re

  • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Thursday February 10, 2022 @06:14PM (#62257281)

    As my title says, most products should be designed to be modular and standardized, sort of like metric and imperial screws (#8-32, M6, etc). But take this idea from the most basic parts like screws, and upscale it to modular assemblies and connectivity of components.

    Taking desktop computers as the first example, standards have allowed us for decades to connect any display (VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort), extra RAM (DIMM, SO-DIMM), extra storage (SCSI, IDE, SATA, NVMe), any keyboard and mouse (PS/2, USB, Bluetooth) to any computer that had the appropriate connector.

    What we need is all industries to standardize on standard components/assemblies, dimensions, ports and location, etc - just like a PC.

    Since desktop PCs are already modular, the next step should be laptops, followed by tablets and smartphones.

    Taking smartphones as an example, there should be maybe three different smartphone sizes. Standard displays should work with all the smartphones of that size, no matter which brand or OS you're using. That means buying a 6" smartphone display, a 6" SmartPhone 202X, a 6" storage module, a 6" battery, etc. and connect all the parts together. Sure, our smartphones would be a bit bigger and thicker, but the part that gets destroyed is usually the screen, which otherwise should last for more than a few generations of smartphones. The battery, which ages with time, would be easier to replace and we would keep the rest of the phone without any repair delay since we could do it ourselves. The main PCB containing the CPU and RAM is the actual part that becomes obsolete because of technological progress, but the rest of the device should be good enough to last years after an upgrade or two.

    Sure, there would be breaks in compatibility, because of technological advances. It happened in the PC world (VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort are good examples of connectors/protocols changes) and it would probably happen for everything else that's even minimally technological. That's why we would need to define generations of hardware. Something clear and precise with no ambiguity (look at what USB and HDMI are doing, and don't do that ).

    Another example would be hand tool batteries. If standardized, then companies would need to produce better batteries than their competitors instead of relying on buyer lock-in. All we would need is allow the standard to have different voltages and battery chemistries, determined by different pinouts on the standardized connector.

    • You talk about standards but then put that quotation mark after numbers, e.g. 6". What does that even mean, 6 of what?
      • by khchung ( 462899 )

        You talk about standards but then put that quotation mark after numbers, e.g. 6". What does that even mean, 6 of what?

        I guess this will fly over the head of most Americans, especially those still using Imperial units while talking about having standards. Hint: guess what does S.I. stands for?

      • If you lived in the U.S.A. U.K. or Canada you would know that " stands for inches and ' stands for feet. But in any case, someone else mentioned that the aspect ratio does screw things up anyway.

        So anyway, I only used 6 inches as an example of standard phone sizes since most smartphones seem to be marketed this way in the USA and Canada. Obviously, we would need to set the width and height in metric into the standards (for example, 70 mm x 140 mm for what we could call Smartphone Size 1), which would give u

        • Well, failing to account for metric vs US imperial (UK imperial is different) cost NASA $327.6 million in 1999. I'd say it's an important part of a debate on standards, especially when most device production occurs internationally.
  • by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Friday February 11, 2022 @05:18AM (#62258399)
    To sort waste, you have to have a huge warehouse, and lots of costly labor, that want generous benefits, and will sue if injured (think needlestick, medical waste), or they think they can get away with it. And wear the cost of disposing of uneconomic waste (broken china, soft pvc plastics, foams, tyres) China stopped accepting most waste. Africa loves to burn clothing, just because its cheaper than coal or wood. A good test is how much to dispose of a mattress. In Australia about USD 30. No way will there be zero waste, as the sorting costs will exceed returns - unless unlimited taxpayer subsidies. So far, Germany has the best waste laws - the place that sold it to you has to take back the product and packaging. And they make it difficult to shipping container away. Fail. The group-think committee who thought of this brainfart must be the same mob preaching 'affordable housing' for slave nail technicians and hairdressers.
    • So you are saying it's not economically feasible because that's how it is in Australia? Perhaps that's more of an Australian problem than a general problem, especially compared to Europe.

      Recycling works just fine in most European countries because they realize that charging the public to recycle waste like an old mattress is a stupid idea for the simple reason there is always people that are such cheapskates that they'll dump it in the woods or burn it in their backyard instead.

      That you think the Finnish id

      • From the article it sounded to me like Finland didn't really understand reality. Ending all waste is as impossible a task as ending suffering or reversing entropy. As it happens, the idea that people can will reality to change is not new. The Soviets sure bought into it. As did the Nazis, Fascists, and quite a few other far-left ideologies.
        • Finland understands reality very well, it's just that people like you don't understand Finns at all which is why you compare their aspirations to those of failed ideologies.

          And it seems you also totally misunderstand the topic at hand, by saying "ending all waste" they are talking about a circular economy that's carbon-neutral, ie everything is recycled and reused in some fashion and they are a good bit on the way to that goal.

          • China understands it cannot recycle everything. Not economic. Finland is having a game of words - what cannot be circular or repurposed - is therefore not waste? I gave examples - medical waste- all those PVC protective gowns and tubing , single use components- that chemists know if burnt - give measurable cancerous toxins. Car tyres - do tell how to reuse - unless you are also still making car tyres. Denmark and Sweden, incinerate, with few negatives, such a dioxins, but the incinerator crud must go to lan
            • Some waste like medical is burnt because there is no known/good method to recycle it, but don't you have scrubbers in Australia to clean the exhaust of toxins?

              Also, why would you burn old tyres?? Here we either re-thread them or grind them up and re-use the rubber in various different products, is that not the norm?

              The incinerator "crud" can be made into a form a glass that can be used as aggregate or building material.

              Nothing of this is revolutionary, but if there is no will to change nothing will really h

  • for a country to do this is to make "planned obsolescence" illegal.

    • How? You can't legislate that products won't wear out or be superseded by something new and better. And it would be insane to tell businesses not to be aware that their products will wear out or become technologically obsolete.

      Laws cannot dictate to reality. It has been tried.

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