Managing Wastivity for Sustainability

Abstract

The different phases of waste management include, generation, reduction, recycling/reuse, and disposal. Out of these, the main emphasis should be on waste reduction, which will reduce the load on all subsequent phases of waste management. A sound measure of waste management effectiveness is “wastivity”, i.e. a ratio of the waste to input. From systems view point, the wastivity should take into consideration the system waste (as a holistic measure of waste of all resources) as the numerator and total systems input as the base. The management of wastivity of different types would effect all the three dimensions of sustainability, i.e. economic, environmental, and social. A sustainable enterprise, with low wastivity, will be able to attain the triple bottom line.