gestion des déchets, waste management

Waste management: decentralizing for better management

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Reducing the environmental impact of waste and encouraging its reuse calls for a new approach to its management. This requires the modeling of circuits on a territorial scale, and the improvement of collaboration between public and private actors.

Territorial waste management is one of the fundamental aspects of the circular economy. Audrey Tanguy,1 a researcher at Mines Saint-Étienne, is devoting some of her research to this subject by focusing on the development of approaches to enable the optimal management of waste according to its type and the characteristics of different territories. “The principle is to characterize renewable and local resources in order to define how they can be processed directly on the territory,” explains Audrey Tanguy. Organic waste, for example, should be processed using the shortest possible circuits because it degrades quickly. Current approaches tend to centralize as much waste as possible with a view to its processing, while circular approaches tend towards more local, decentralized circuits. Decentralization can be supported by low-tech technologies, which optimize local recycling or composting in the case of organic waste, especially in the urban environment.

The research associated with waste processing therefore aims to find ways to relocate these flows. Modeling tools can help to spatialize these flows and then provide guidance for decision-makers on how to accommodate local channels. “Traditional waste-processing impact assessment tools assess centralized industrial systems, so we need to regionalize them,” explains Audrey Tanguy. These tools must take the territorial distribution of resources into account, regardless of whether they are reusable. In other words, they must determine which are the main flows that can be engaged in order to recover and transform materials. “It is therefore a question of using the appropriate method to prioritize the collection of materials, and to this end, an inventory of the emission and consumption flows needs to be drawn up within the territory,” states the researcher.

Implementation of strategies in the territories

In order to implement circular economy strategies on a territorial scale, the collaboration of different types of local actors is essential. Beyond the tools required, researchers and the organizations in place can also play an important role by helping the decision-makers to carry out more in-depth investigations of the various activities present in the chosen territory. This enables the definition of collaborative strategies in which certain central stakeholders galvanize the actions of the other actors. For example, business associations or local public-private partnership associations promote policies that support industrial strategies. A good illustration is the involvement of the Macéo association, in partnership with Mines Saint-Étienne, in the implementation of strategies for the recycling and recovery of plastic waste in the Massif Central region. It acts as a central player in this territory and coordinates the various actions by implementing collaborative projects between companies and communities.

The tools also provide access to quantitative data about the value of potential exchanges between companies and enable the comparison of different scenarios based on exchanges. This can be applied to aspects of the pooling of transport services, suppliers or infrastructure. Even if these strategies do not concern core industrial production activities, they lay the foundations for future strategies on a broader scale by establishing trust between different actors.

Reindustrialisation of territories

“We assume that in order to reduce our impacts, one of the strategies to be implemented is the reindustrialization of territories to promote shorter circuits,” explains Natacha Gondran,1 a researcher in environmental assessment at Mines Saint-Étienne. “This may involve trade-offs, such as sometimes accepting a degree of local degradation of the measured impacts in exchange for a greater reduction in the overall impact,” the researcher continues.

Reindustrializing territories is therefore likely to favor the implementation of circular dynamics. Collaboration between different actors at the local level could in this way provide appropriate responses to global issues concerning the pressure on resources and emissions linked to human activities. “This is one of the strategies to be put in place for the future, but it is also important to rethink our relationship with consumption in order to reduce it and embrace a more moderate approach,” concludes Natacha Gondran.

1 Audrey Tanguy and Natacha Gondran carry out their research in the framework of the Environment, City and Society Laboratory, a joint CNRS research unit composed of 7 members including Mines Saint-Étienne.

Antonin Counillon

This article is part of a 2-part mini-series on the circular economy.
Read the previous article:

Economics – dive in, there is so much to discover!

Natacha Gondran

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Mines Saint-Étienne | Circular economy, Ecodesign, Ecological transition, LCA

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économie circulaire, impact environnemental

Economics – dive in, there is so much to discover!

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To effectively roll out circular economy policies within a territory, companies and decision-makers require access to evaluation and simulation tools. The design of these tools, still in the research phase, necessarily requires a more detailed consideration of the impact of human activities, both locally and globally.

“The circular economy enables optimization of the available resources in order to preserve them and reduce pressure on the environment,” explains Valérie Laforest,1 a researcher at Mines Saint-Étienne. Awareness of the need to protect the planet began to develop in earnest in the 1990s and was gradually accompanied by the introduction of various key regulations. For example, the 1996 IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control) Directive, which Valérie Laforest helped to implement through her research, aims to prevent and reduce the different types of pollutant emissions. More recently, legislation such as the French Law on Energy Transition for Green Growth (2015) and the Anti-Waste Law for a Circular Economy (2021) have reflected the growing desire to take the environment into account when considering anthropic activities. However, to enable industries to adapt to these regulations, it is essential for them to have access to tools derived from in-depth research on the impacts of their activities.

Decision-support tools for actors

To enable actors to comply with the regulations and reduce their impacts on the environment, they need to be provided with tools adapted to issues that are both global and local. Part of the research on the circular economy therefore concerns the development of such tools. The aim is to design models that are precise enough to be able to characterize and evaluate a system on the scale of an individual territory, while also being general enough to be adapted to territories with other characteristics. Fairly general methodological frameworks can therefore be developed, within which it is possible to determine criteria and indicators specific to certain cases or sectors. These tools should provide decision-makers with the information they need to implement their infrastructures.

At Mines Saint-Étienne and in collaboration with Macéo, a team of researchers is focusing on the development of a tool called ADALIE, which aims to characterize the potential of territories. This tool creates maps of different geographical areas showing different criteria, such as the economic or environmental criteria of these territories, as well as the industries established in them and their impacts. Decision-makers can therefore use this mapping tool as the basis for choosing their priority activity areas. “The underlying issue is about being able to ensure that a territory possesses the dimensions required to implement circular economy strategies, and that they are successful,” Valerie Laforest tells us. In its next phase, the ADALIE program then aims to archive experiences of effective territorial practices in order to create databases.

For each territorial study, the research provides a huge volume of different types of information. This data generates models that can then be tested in other territories, which also enables the robustness of the models to be checked according to the chosen indicators. These types of tools help local stakeholders to make decisions on aspects of industrial and territorial economics. “This facilitates reflection on how to develop strategies that bring together several actors affected by different issues and problems within a given territory,” states Valérie Laforest. To this end, it is essential to have access to methodologies that enable the measurement of the different environmental impacts. Two main methods are available.

Measurements of impact on the circular economy

Life cycle analysis (LCA) aims to estimate environmental impacts spanning a large geographical and temporal scale, taking account of issues such as distance transported. LCA seeks to model all potential consumptions and emissions over the entire life span of a system. The models are developed by compiling data from other systems and can be used to compare different scenarios in order to determine the scenario that is likely to have the least impact.

Read more on I’MTech: What is life cycle analysis?

The other approach is the best available techniques (BAT) method. This practice was implemented under the European Industrial Emissions Directive (IPPC then IED) in 1996. It aims to help European companies achieve performance standards equivalent to benchmark values for their consumption and emission flows. These benchmarks are based on data from samples of European companies. The granting or refusal of an operating license depends on the comparison of their performance with the reference sample. BATs are therefore based on European standards and have a regulatory purpose.

BATs are related to companies’ performance in the use phase, i.e. the performance of techniques is closely scrutinized in relation to incoming and outgoing flows during the use phase. LCA, on the other hand, is based on real or modeled data including information from upstream and downstream of this use phase. The BAT and LCA approaches are therefore complementary and not exclusive. For example, between two BAT analyses of a system to ensure its compliance with the regulations, different models of the systems could be created by conducting LCAs in order to determine the technique that has the least impact throughout its entire life cycle.

Planetary boundaries

In addition to quantifying the flows generated by companies, impact measurements must also include the effects of these flows on the environment on a global scale.

To this end, research and practices also focus on the effects of activities in relation to the different planetary boundaries. These boundary levels reflect the capacity of the planet to absorb impacts, beyond which they are considered to have irreversible effects.

The work of Natacha Gondran1 at Mines Saint-Étienne is contributing to the development of methods for assessing absolute environmental sustainability, based on planetary boundaries. “We work on the basis of global limitations, defined in the literature, which correspond to categories of impacts that are subject to thresholds at the global level. If humanity exceeds these thresholds, the conditions of life on Earth will become less stable than they are today. We are trying to implement this in impact assessment tools on the scale of systems such as companies,” she explains. These impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and the eutrophication of water, are not directly visible. They must therefore be represented in order to identify the actions to be taken to reduce them.

Read more on I’MTech: Circular economy, environmental assessment and environmental budgeting

Planetary boundaries are defined at the global level by a community of scientists. Modeling tools enable these boundaries to be used to define ecological budgets that correspond, in a manner of speaking, to the maximum quantity of pollutants that can be emitted without exceeding these global limits. The next challenge is then to design different methods to allocate these planetary budgets to territories or production systems. This makes it possible to estimate the impact of industries or territories in relation to planetary boundaries. “Today, many industries are already exceeding these boundary levels, such as the agri-food industry associated with meat. The challenge is to find local systems that can act as alternatives to these circuits in order to drop below the boundary levels,” explains the researcher. For example, it would be wise to locate livestock production closer to truck farming sites, as livestock effluents could then be used as fertilizer for truck farming products. This could reduce the overall impact of the different agri-food chains on the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, as well as the impact of transport-related emissions, while improving waste management at the territorial level.

Together, these different tools provide an increasingly extensive methodological framework for ensuring the compatibility of human activities with the conservation of ecosystems.

1 Valérie Laforest and Natacha Gondran carry out their research in the framework of the Environment, City and Society Laboratory, a joint CNRS research unit composed of 7 members including Mines Saint-Étienne.

Antonin Counillon

This article is part of a 2-part mini-series on the circular economy.
Read more:

Waste management: decentralizing for better management

soins, care

Hospitals put to the test by shocks

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Benoît Demil, I-site Université Lille Nord Europe (ULNE) and Geoffrey Leuridan, IMT Atlantique – Institut Mines-Télécom

The Covid-19 crisis has put lasting strain on the health care system, in France and around the world. Hospital staff have had to deal with increasing numbers of patients, often in challenging conditions in terms of equipment and space: a shortage of masks and protective equipment initially, then a lack of respirators and anesthetics, and more recently, overloaded intensive care units.

Adding to these difficulties, logistical problems have exacerbated shortage problems. Under these extreme conditions, and despite all the difficulties, the hospital system has withstood and absorbed the shock of the crisis. “The hospital system did not crack under pressure,” as stated by Étienne Minvielle and Hervé Dumez, co-authors of a report on the French hospital management system during the Covid-19 crisis.

While it is unclear how long such a feat can be maintained, and at what price, we may also ask questions about the resilience and reliability of the health care system. In other words, how can care capacity be maintained at a constant quality when the organization is under extreme pressure?

We sought to understand this in a study conducted over 14 months during a non-Covid period, with the staff of a critical care unit of a university hospital center.

High reliability organizations

The concepts of resilience and reliability, which have become buzzwords in the current crisis, have been studied extensively for over 30 years in organizational science research  – more particularly those focusing on High Reliability Organizations (HRO).

This research has offered insights into the mechanisms and factors that enable complex sociotechnical systems to maintain safety and a constant quality of service, although the risk of failure remains possible, with serious consequences.

The typical example of an HRO is an aircraft carrier. We know that deference to expertise and skills within a working group, permanent learning routines and training explain how it can ensure its primary mission over time. But much less is known about how the parties involved manage the resources required for their work, and how this management affects resilience and reliability.

Two kinds of situations

In a critical care unit, activity is continuous but irregular, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Some days are uneventful, with a low number of patients, common disorders and diseases, and care that does not present any particular difficulties. The risks of the patients’ health deteriorating are of course still present, but remain under control. This is the most frequently-observed context: 80 of the 92 intervention situations recorded and analyzed in our research relate to such a context.

At times, however, activity is significantly disrupted by a sudden influx of patients (for example, following a serious automobile accident), or by a rapid and sudden change in a patient’s condition. The tension becomes palpable within the unit, movements are quicker and more precise, conversations between health care workers are brief and focused on what is happening.

In both cases, observations show differentiated management of resources, whether human, technical or relating to space. To understand these differences, we must draw on a concept that has long existed in organizational theory: organizational slack, which was brought to light in 1963 by Richard Cyert and James March.

Slack for shocks

This important concept in the study of organizations refers to excess resources in relation to optimal operations. Organizations or their members accumulate this slack to handle multiple demands, which may be competing at times.

The life of organizations offers a multitude of opportunities for producing and using slack. Examples include the financial reserves a company keeps on hand “just in case”, the safety stock a production manager builds up, the redundancy of certain functions or suppliers, the few extra days allowed for a project, oversized budgets negotiated by a manager to meet his year-end targets etc. All of these practices, which are quite common in organizations, contribute to resilience in two ways.

First, they make it possible to avoid unpredictable shocks, such as the default of a subcontractor, an employee being out on sick leave,  an unforeseen event that affects a project or a machine breaking down. Moreover, in risk situations, they prevent the disruption of the sociotechnical system by maintaining it in a non-degraded environment.

Second, these practices absorb the adverse effects of shocks when they arise unexpectedly – whether due to a strike or the sudden arrival of patients in an emergency unit.

How do hospitals create slack?

Let us first note that in a critical care unit, the staff produces and uses slack all the time. It comes from negotiations that the head of the department has with the hospital administration to obtain and defend the spaces and staff required for the unit to operate as effectively as possible. These negotiations are far from the everyday care activity, but are crucial for the organization to run effectively.

At the operational level, health care workers also free up resources quickly, in particular in terms of available beds, to accommodate new patients who arrive unexpectedly.  The system for managing the order of priority for patients and their transfer is a method commonly used to ensure that there is always an excess of available resources.

In most cases, these practices of negotiation and rapid rotation of resources make it possible for the unit to handle situations that arise during its activity. At times, however, due to the very nature of the activity, such practices may not suffice. How do health care workers manage in such situations?

Constant juggling

Our observations show that other practices offset the temporary lack of resources.

Examples include calling in the unit’s day staff as well as night staff, or others from outside the unit to “lend a hand”, reconfiguring the space to create an additional bed with the necessary technical equipment or negotiating a rapid transfer of patients to other departments.  

This constant juggling allows health care workers to handle emergency situations that may otherwise overwhelm them and put patients lives in danger. For them, the goal is to make the best use of the resources available, but also to produce them locally and temporarily when required by emergency situations.

Are all costs allowed?

The existence of slack poses a fundamental problem for organizations – in particular those whose activity requires them to be resilient to ensure a high degree of reliability. Keeping unutilized resources on hand “just in case” goes against a managerial approach that seeks to optimize the use of resources, whether human, financial or equipment  – as called for by New Public Management since the 1980s, in an effort to lower the costs of public services.

This approach has had a clear impact on the health care system, and in particular on the French hospital system over the past two decades, as the recent example of problems with strategic stocks of masks at the beginning of the Covid pandemic unfortunately illustrated .

Beyond the hospital, military experts have recently made the same observation, noting that “economic concerns in terms of defense, meaning efficiency, are a very recent idea,” which “conflicts with the military notions of ‘reserve,’ ‘redundancy’ and ‘escalation of force,’ which are essential to operational effectiveness and to what is now referred to as resilience.”

Of course, this quest for optimization does not only apply to public organizations. But it often goes hand in hand with greater vulnerability of the sociotechnical systems involved. In any case, this was observed during the health crisis, in light of the optimization implemented at the global level to reduce costs in companies’ supply chains. 

To understand this, one only needs to look at the recent stranding of the Ever Given. Blocked for a week in the Suez Canal, this giant container paralyzed 10% of global trade for a week. What lessons can be learned  from this?

A phenomenon made invisible in emergencies

First of all, it is important for organizations aiming for high reliability to keep in mind that maintaining slack has a cost, and that that they must therefore identify the systems or sub-systems for which resilience must absolutely be ensured.  The difference between slack that means wasting resources and slack that allows for resilience is a very fine line.

Bearing this cost calls for education efforts, since it must not only be fully agreed to by all of the stakeholders, but also justified and defended.

Lastly, the study we conducted in a critical care unit showed that while slack is produced in part during action, it disappears once a situation has stabilized. 

This phenomenon is therefore largely invisible to managers of hospital facilities. While these micro-practices may not be measured by traditional performance indicators, they nevertheless contribute significantly: this might not be a new lesson, but it is worth repeating to ensure that it is not forgotten.

Benoît Demil, professor of strategic management, I-site Université Lille Nord Europe (ULNE) and Geoffrey Leuridan, research professor, IMT Atlantique – Institut Mines-Télécom

This article has been republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the  original article (in French).

Anuragini Shirish

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Institut Mines-Télécom Business School | Management of information systems, Digital innovations, Technology law

Anuragini Shirish is an Associate Professor at Institute Mines-Télécom Business School, France. She is an elected member from her institution for the governance of the LITEM (Laboratoire Innovation Technologies Économie et Management) (EA 7363), a joint research laboratory under the University of Paris-Saclay, France.

Her research focuses on studying the humanistic and instrumental impacts of several socio-technical phenomena in the broad areas of digital work, digital innovation and digital society. Her research has been published in international refereed journals including the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), Information Systems Journal (ISJ), Communications of the Association of the Information Systems (CAIS) and International Journal of Information and Management (IJIM). She has also presented her work in several premier IS and management conferences including the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), the Academy of Management (AOM), Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS), and the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), among others. She has been honoured with several awards including the “Outstanding Educator Award” by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) women’s network and the second prize at the Sphinx best thesis award.

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