Few hours before the official release of the new Star Wars sequel (
Star Wars: The Force Awakens) the buzz about the movie has skyrocketed. Harrison Ford revealed how his leg was almost broken by hydraulic forces. The new movie is expected by decades of millions of impatient Star Wars fans. But the same is true for the reaction of the waste management industry to the tsunami of the third industrial revolution – I dare to write that we need something like a rapid awakening and paradigm shift in order to surf on the huge waves of the current technological, social and economic change.
“Our world is becoming more controversial than ever. We are capable to identify the quantity and quality of water in March, in a distance which ranges between 35 -100 million km but, due to poverty and lack of appropriate global response, roughly 700 million people (1 to 10) lack access to safe water. We are discussing how to utilize the Internet of Things in industrialized economies but, according the recent ISWA’s “Wasted Health: The tragic case of dumpsites” report, the health impacts of dumpsites are worst than malaria in India, Indonesia and Philippines. On the bright side, the third industrial revolution creates new, unimaginable opportunities for making sustainability a cornerstone of each and every industrial sector. On the dark side, the recent “Global Waste Management Outlook” (GWMO) report revealed that roughly 2-3 billion people lack the most elementary waste services while
As far as we know, industrial revolutions are long historical waves that gradually cover the planet. In reality, even now, there are parts of our world that have not been so much affected by the second industrial revolution. So no one expects that the third industrial revolution would soon transform the whole planet. But the current industrial revolution is based on technologies that follow exponential rather than linear paths of development – practically it means that the change that is coming will be too big and too fast. And this change is happening with the current shift of power (from global “north” to global “south”) and the continuously growing global interconnectivity. It is expected that the current industrial revolution will affect mostly the developing world (roughly 40% of the planet’s population). The poorer part of the world will benefit much more than the richer one, for the first time in the history of industrial revolutions.
In this rapidly changing landscape, disruption of traditional industries will very soon be the new “business as usual”. A recent IDC report, published on November 4 this year, predicts that by 2020 one third of the top 20 firms, in every industry, will be seriously disrupted or even failed. The recycling and waste management industry seems unprepared for substantial changes – unfortunately, a good, even if complicated and expensive, adaptation plan is not enough. What is coming is a radical redefinition of what is called waste and how it will be managed.”
Well, this is the introduction of my new article “Third industrial revolution and the future of recycling” that was published yesterday at the
Waste Management World magazine (November – December 2015 issue) – you can register for free and enjoy the whole article plus a great content from many important contributors. If you want to continue click
here
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