Iñaki Susaeta: Managing Waste and the Challenge of the Circular Economy
‘Waste: we do not want to see it, but it is here’ Iñaki Susaeta, an environmental technician at IHOBE, the Basque Government’s environmental management agency, thus started his talk at the Donostia Sustainability Forum. In a world flooded with statistics, Susaeta proposed a change of strategy: ‘for the narrative to try to kill the data’. The aim is to avoid cold figures to address the root of the problem: our relationship with objects and hidden cost of our development.
Our economic activity turns resources into a relentless tide of waste. Susaeta gave the example of the textile industry to explain the size of the problem. He spelt out that 100 billion garments a year are produced in the world; that means around 15 items per person, many of which end up in remote landfill such as the Atacama Desert or in countries like Ghana. ‘Waste doesn’t travel well, but it reaches distant and very exotic places’, he said ironically. He also referred to the existence of mafias that illegally move thousands of tonnes through Europe because, when all said and done, ‘if somebody is illegally moving waste, it is because there is money to be made’.
Iñaki Susaeta was particularly critical about sustainability marketing. In his opinion, many labels with the watchword ‘recyclable’ are questionable and often ‘the only thing they achieve is to perpetuate a false feeling of sustainability among buyers’. The real challenge is not only to recycle, but also to question the model: ‘It may not be about producing more, but rather about producing so that it lasts longer’.
The challenges of the circular economy
Comparing economic theory and the laws of physics was one of the most important aspects of the talk. Citing the limits of thermodynamics, Susaeta pointed out that ‘a completely circular economy is categorically impossible’. He explained that all the material processes cause inevitable losses and that entropy increases in each recycling cycle, which means that additional energy is always required.
Despite these physical constraints, the circular economy continues to be the right path, even though progress is slow. The circularity rate in Europe is barely 11.8% and is around 8% in the Basque Country. Given this scenario, Susaeta asked ‘which industries should be radically reduced rather than making them more sustainable?’. He suggested that the answer does not only lie in production, but also in a radical change by consumers: ‘It may not be about producing more, but rather about producing so that it lasts longer’.
Waste: an overlooked proximity business
Susaeta decried the hypocrisy of the current system, where waste is often transported thousands of kilometres illegally. ‘If somebody is illegally moving waste, it is because there is money to be made’, he explained referring to the mafias that move thousands of tonnes around Europe. He defended the principle of proximity and self-sufficiency to address this; he criticised the paradox that ‘Waste doesn’t travel well, but it reaches distant and very exotic places’, such as the Atacama Dessert or Ghana.
As regards infrastructure, the IHOBE technician used a striking metaphor to describe the role of landfill: ‘Landfill is a luxury; it is the Rolex of waste management’. He stressed that space for landfill is extremely scarce in the Basque Country; it therefore must be only kept for what is strictly necessary and treated as a high-cost resource and not as an easy solution.
The 2030 strategy and the secondary materials market
The Basque Country has set ambitious targets for 2030: to cut waste generation per GDP unit by 30% and to achieve a waste recovery rate of 85%. Therefore, Susaeta identified the ‘hateful eight’: groups of priority waste such as steelworks slag, construction and demolition waste, and plastic, whose volume or technical difficulty require special attention.
The key to success – he added – lies in creating a secure and stable market for secondary materials. The Basque Country imports 77% of the commodities that it uses; therefore, turning waste into resource is an opportunity to boost competitiveness. Susaeta was very clear about the requirements for this new market:
- Waste properly separated at source: ‘What is not separated well, is not recycled well’.
- Extreme quality guarantee: The quality control of those materials must be ‘absolutely rigorous” to get a firmer foothold and for industry to trust them.
- Administrative requirements Green public procurement must require institutions to use secondary materials.
A call for collective action
He ended by calling on all social stakeholders. He asked academia to research new uses and better technologies, and reminded them that ‘research is not at zero cost’ and requires realistic investment. He called on producers to persevere with separating; and on the administration, for a streamlined deployment of instruments and monitoring.
Susaeta then urged resilience. Waste management is not a perfect target, but rather a continuous improvement process when each stakeholder must do their bit so that – in the future – waste is no longer something ‘we do not want to see’ to become the basis of our economy.
