We are determined to go to the next conference in Bali to achieve a result.
Any serious business leader who examines the flow of materials for their business knows that a linear system that relies on external inputs produces supply risks. But it can also produce disposal risks as well from toxic materials used in the manufacture of products.
Looking at your business through a carbon neutral lens can also help your business in other ways by increasing the efficiency of resource use, producing cleaner, avoiding and reducing waste and ultimately improving your overall performance and reputation. Economists are often fond of saying that there are no banknotes lying on the pavement because someone would have already picked them up. In climate change, however, there are plenty of banknotes just waiting to be picked up. After all, carbon is generally the waste product of producing energy, and reducing waste, becoming more efficient, is always good for business.
Integrating the 3R approach, reduce, reuse and recycle, into a company's waste management and material efficiency processes can lead to multiple benefits. As with energy efficiency, this requires a ‘whole of system' approach. A multiple industry approach that promotes a more closed loop, rather than a linear, system can produce even greater savings. In Denmark, for example, a number of companies established operations near each other to ‘feed' off the waste streams. In the Netherlands, Shell is selling its carbon emissions to nearby horticultural businesses for their greenhouses. Shell receives direct payments for the excess CO2, tax breaks to cover the infrastructure costs, as well as credits under the European trading scheme.
What a waste
- The amount of waste generated to make a semiconductor chip is over 100,000 times its weight, a laptop 4,000 times its weight. Two litres
of petrol and 1,000 litres of water are required to make a litre of orange juice in the Southern part of the US. - Eighty per cent of products are discarded after a single use.
- Business leader Paul Hawken estimates that 99 per cent of the original materials used in the production of, or contained within, the goods made within the US become waste within six weeks.
- It is estimated that industry moves, mines, extracts, burns, wastes, pumps and disposes of more than one million kilograms (2.2 million pounds) of material to provide one middle class average family's needs in an OECD country for a year.
- Total wastes in the US, excluding wastewater, now exceed 22 trillion kilograms (50 trillion pounds) per year. This includes: 3.3 trillion pounds of CO2, 19 billion pounds of polystyrene ‘peanuts', 710 billion pounds of hazardous waste
Qian Yi, from Tsinghua University China, looks at closed loop processes and cleaner technologies for China's future development. 
