Negowaste ©

At the top of the waste hierarchy we have ‘Prevention’ and I share this vision of a world without waste.

Research suggests to achieve the target of “waste free world”, we require a system that designs out waste and designs in value. I see this is as an opportunity for innovation investments and business leaders, however the current barrier is lack of real financial return to not produce waste, since such value is not measured, whereas waste has gain increasingly trade value leading to profits.

In our journey to identify funding for an innovation platform dedicated to develop a new generation of packaging without waste, myself and Dr. Joyce Tsoi successfuly attracted interest from potential partners accross all packaging stakeholders, however we still had to demonstrate how such investment can create value (economic and financial). As a response to this challenge we found the need  to develop a calculator (Negowaste©) that quantifies and converts the positive value of no-waste production into financial returns which would support the design of a new sharp tax system proposed by Nanako Kawauchi and myself.  

Thus the system needs to be designed to incorporate a ‘no-waste’ value into the bottom line as well as in a sharp tax system (such as the VAT) that rewards consumer and business investment in waste-free choices. The benefit of such a tool will be to provide businesses with an awareness of the cost/impact of waste produced, ensuring that waste problems do not recur or get shifted to another place (e.g. by converting waste to energy, the problem of waste is turned into challenges in pollution control to clean emissions), as well as to offer financial arguments for investment in zero-waste innovation, focusing on the top of the waste hierarchy, when the emphasis is placed on prevention rather than managing and bearing the costs of failure.

By rethinking in this way, total costs could be minimised or eliminated.

The outcome of the tool would provide the basis for establishing a usable commercial ‘Negowaste©’ label. The tool aims to:
• Integrate the positive and negative value of waste into the tax system
• Provide businesses with a fi nancial argument to invest in zero-waste innovation
• Provide a tangible way of tracking and benchmarking sustainability in regard to the waste agenda (i.e. equivalent to carbon footprint metrics) Further details of this research proposal: negowaste-methodology-july09 or get in touch.