Waste not want not: the resource crisis

D66 Euro MP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, author of a draft report on a resource efficient Europe, thinks it’s about time governments realised that it’s not just the environment that will benefit from a greater emphasis on resource efficient measures but the economy as well. The Volkskrant interviewed him.

‘Our standard of living depends on how we use resources. Tomorrow’s companies must be either resource efficient or they cease to exits’, Gerbrandy tells the paper.
iPhone
His iPhone for instance, is an example of an ‘old fashioned design that shouldn’t have come on the market’. ‘It doesn’t open anywhere, you can’t get at anything. If you throw this away you throw away a wealth of resources that can’t be re-used’, he says, pocketing the phone that he purchased nevertheless.
Our economy has been addicted to cheap resources, Gerbrandy tells the paper. ‘From the Industrial revolution onward resource prices went down. But in the last decade they have rocketed. Have you seen the AkzoNobel yearly figures? Or Unilever’s? We are at a point where we have to look at the economy from a different angle.’
Silent killers
Gerbrandy slates the approach favoured by, for instance, VNO-NCW employers’ chief Bernard Wientjes: ‘He is talking about wage control when it’s the price of resources that is the biggest cause of inflation. I was in a DIY shop the other day where they were re pricing stuff. Glue was up by 25%. This sort of price increases will be felt by consumers across the board. Resource hikes are the silent killers of spending power’, he says.
The Euro MP thinks his report might be too ‘green’ for most politicians. ‘It is being discussed in the EU environment committee when it should be discussed in the economic committee. Member states haven’t been too keen either. They say that at this point in time they want fewer environmental rules, not more. But what they don’t realise is that those rules represent a way out of the crisis.’
Taskforce
Gerbrandy wants a taskforce combining government, companies and NGOs, he tells the paper. It would have to come up with an action programme within a year. Another measure would be to lower VAT on resources from waste. And the European Ecodesign guideline should be extended to include a paragraph on designing products with an eye on future recycling. ‘So the battery can be removed from my iPhone’, he says.
The Netherlands has abolished the tax on waste disposal, not a good move for the recycling industry, Gerbrandy says. ‘We were doing well here. We have state-of-the-art waste disposal ovens which turn waste into energy. It’s working well but recycling would be better.’ Ironically enough, says Gerbrandy, this means that the Dutch will lose their head start to countries who can now skip the incineration of waste and focus on recycling.
Goldmine
Eventually Gerbrandy wants a ban on waste dumps and the incineration of valuable resources, he tells the paper. ‘Think about it: a ton of mobile phones contains fifty times the amount of gold than a ton of gold ore. They’re throwing away a goldmine.’