“There is nothing new under the Sun”

This is the first of a series of Frith Resource Management newsletter editions, looking back at technical waste management articles from around 100 years ago, and more recently, to see if that can help our understanding of issues today.

Today’s topic is climate change, at the front of our minds from the successive heatwaves of this summer, where wildfires raged in many parts of England, Scotland, Wales, France, Spain and across the northern hemisphere. This included houses burnt down from wildfires within 15 miles of our offices here in Shropshire. But what did they think about the likelihood of climate effects from waste management activities in the past? At Frith RM we have undertaken hundreds of carbon assessments for waste services and a key finding from these is that the main impacts come, not from collection & transport, but from landfill, incineration, and offsets from recycling. This is explained well in this article from the forerunner journal of the CIWM, in May 1930.

So almost a hundred years ago some people in our sector were well aware of the global implications of CO2 from human activity, including fossil fuel consumption and waste disposal.

Nothing new under the sun? I had seen old reports about climate change science on social media in the past, but had a slight scepticism they might be faked, when I read this from the original copy of ‘Public Cleansing – The Official Organ of the Institute of Public Cleansing’, May 1930 – I was dumbfounded! Well in truth I swore out loud, so the opposite of dumbfounded – but it was one of many, many surprises that we will reveal in coming editions of ‘Consigned to the History of Dustbin’!

Any articles or reflections you would like to share for this series, please email paul@frithrm.com or call 01746 552423, or pen a letter to Frith Resource Management, 55a High Street, Bridgnorth, Shropshire WV16 4DX

Many thanks to Tina Benfield of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, for help in accessing these archives.