James Greyson is an independent waste prevention and sustainability analyst. SD Innovation is his research and consultancy practice, based in East Sussex. James has specialised in lateral thinking and whole-system analysis during 15 years of projects with national and international businesses and NGOs. Please make contact if you seek progress beyond conventional solutions.
May 2007: Case study of failed waste management in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire County Council will soon decide whether to commit local taxpayers to 30 years of payments, estimated at £800 million, for an MBT system which will turn preventable, compostable, reusable and recyclable wastes into contaminated 'grey compost' and 'refuse derived fuel' designed to become air pollution and greenhouse gases. The County could have remained a national leader in improving recycling rates had they instead genuinely engaged with the public in challenging the throwaway society with a front of pipe strategy. See www.frontofpipe.net. April 2007: National accounting can inspire a culture of peace
Gross Domestic Product measures economic activity and underpins the mythical measure of economic growth. Nations are conventionally thought to be successfull if their growth remains high. The innovation described below (precycling insurance) allows ecological sustainability to be built into GDP so that economic growth need no longer be nature's enemy. However there remains a problem with a global culture of violence, at street level and in nations. Gross Peaceful Product is a simple modification to GDP. By omiting spending on weapons from GDP, nations have an economic incentive to spend the minimum on fighting equipment, which helps build a global culture where violence is a less obvious solution. www.grosspeacefulproduct.org.uk March 2007: Capitalism reinvented for sustainable economic growth
A peer-reviewed paper by James Greyson is now being printed for publication by the Journal of Cleaner Production in their May 2007 "zero emissions" special issue. The paper proposes a new form of economic instrument capable of correcting the historical failure of markets to achieve both sustainable development and economci growth. Based upon a variation of insurance already used in Europe for electronic waste regulation and recycling, precycling insurance can work with all kinds of products and all ecological sustainability issues. In particular this is the first plausible solution for climate change which does not require mandatory limits. See www.BlindSpot.org.uk. | 
