10 Leadership Lessons From U.S. Commanding General John E. Michel | Vala Afshar

10 Leadership Lessons From U.S. Commanding General John E. Michel

Brigadier General John E. Michel is the Commanding General, NATO Air Training Command-Afghanistan; NATO Training Mission/Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan; and Commander, 438th Air Expeditionary Wing, Kabul, Afghanistan. In addition to serving our nation as an active duty General Officer in the United States Air Force for 26 years and counting, General Michel enjoys helping people learn to walk differently in the world so they can become the best version of themselves possible, something he addresses in his book, Mediocre Me. General Michel is a widely recognized expert in culture, strategy and individual and organizational change.

Commanding General John E. Michel

An accomplished unconventional leader and proven status quo buster who has successfully led several multi-billion dollar transformation efforts, General Michel has dealt with business transformation at a scale that most of us will never see in our lives. Here he shares with us his words of wisdom and expertise. These leadership lessons from the military can be translated for business and commercial organizations anywhere.

10 Leadership Lessons from the U.S. Military and Commanding General Michel:

1. Be a strong leader -- General Michel sums up the top three must-have attributes of a strong leader:

• Leaders realize it's about people, not things: When you work a lot with technology it can be easy to confuse priorities and become infatuated with the technology. Strong leaders put the people first and leverage technology to make them more efficient.


• Leaders take smart risks: This infers that things may go well or they may not go so well but either way, you have to be willing to try. Strong leaders have the courage to do the right thing.


• Leaders are willing to fail forward and try again: Strong leaders realize things will not always work out the way they would like and when things don't go their way they regroup and realize that every opportunity is an opportunity to begin again, only smarter.

2. Co-create and collaborate with individuals -- Fear is a very significant issue that individuals and organizations have when they are moving into something that is uncomfortable. To combat fear when trying to drive transformation in an organization, leaders need to make it a top priority to involve every individual in the organization in the process of co-creation. General Michel's rule in guiding people through change is to put his vision in pencil, not marker. This communicates that you know that the whole organization has ideas on how to get you where you are going. "Creating a completely collaborative approach going forward is the only way to remove the fear of failure," says Michel, "When people are involved in that process they are willing to go to uncharted territory."

3. Include stakeholders throughout the process -- Speaking from experience from his time at the U.S. Transportation Command, which leverages a significant information backbone and has a massive group of stakeholders, General Michel advises involving key stakeholders as broadly as you can on a consistent basis. Sending a memo at the beginning and then filling them in on how it worked out at the end of the effort is not going to cut it. After establishing an initial vision, leaders should engage in an aggressive campaign to include stakeholders throughout the process. This consistent communication makes stakeholders feel they have a role and a shared understanding, reducing resistance and making them more apt to contribute. "No matter what business line you are in you will never go wrong if you involve people in the process," says Michel.

4. The customer is the common ground -- General Michel emphasizes the customer point of view by saying that any of us in business are in business to serve someone else. Getting everyone calibrated to the customer, making the customer the center, makes it easier for everyone to find a common ground to connect to. "If we all have a shared and beneficial outcome in serving our customer, we have a unified place where all our interests converge. Success is not defined by our own personal and business line goals; success is in the eyes of the customer," says Michel.

5. Demonstrate clear intent -- According to General Michel, the best organizations and individuals operate on disciplined thought, leading to disciplined action. He says one of most important things a leader can do is to supervise clear intent, which is something the military does well. The best organizations provide clear intent -- clear expectations to people about what you are doing and where you are going and clear expectations of what you need from people and what you expect them to do. Maintaining this high-level of transparency creates a state of trust where individuals are willing to share challenges and creates a culture where leaders will provide the resources they need. These conditions that a leader sets establishes how well organizations and individuals can pivot and be agile in doing what needs to be done, allowing the organization to shift and move with the changing demands of the marketplace.

6. Use technology tied to metrics to enable transformation -- General Michel calls IT a "force multiplier" and says that technology has been an enabler and accelerator for the military in Afghanistan enabling them to achieve the success much more quickly and cheaply in the face of shrinking timelines, budgets and personnel. To avoid technology that comes in late and over budget due to changes in expectations which quickly make the technology irrelevant, Michel says you have to closely monitor and utilize performance-based methods informed by clearly stated goals and objectives along way. "There is a propensity for people to add on, change and modify and overtime we end up off course. If we don't clearly tie technology to metrics, the initial intent can be sidetracked and lend itself for being irrelevant for what you originally intended to use it for," he warns.

7. Break projects down into smaller components -- In order to be more agile, stay within the budget and keep projects relevant it makes good sense to modularize capabilities. Wise leaders will look at a massive problem and start to immediately break it down into a series of components, align to see who is best able to handle those components and then orchestrate them into a collaborative whole. According to General Michel, the military has mastered this. He says that it's important to look at achieving effect by bringing the least amount of force upon the right place in a system to achieve what you want.

8. Push the boundaries of your potential -- In his book, Mediocre Me, General Michel focuses on achieving personal performance and helping people to figure out what is holding people them back from realizing their full potential as an individual or as a change leader in a world that needs talent more than ever. He says that if we don't push the boundaries of our potential we will start to atrophy and live much smaller lives than we are capable of living. People in this state of "prolonged equilibrium" enter a state of denial that they are capable of doing things and being more.

9. Be morally courageous -- For a leader to be morally courageous they must be willing to do something that is unpopular. They must be willing to make choices that are consistent with their values, even if that means going against the flow to do what they know is right. This can be an uncomfortable place and leaders need to have the courage to lean in when it would be easier to fall back. Leaders are especially under scrutiny by people who are looking on to see if they are going to walk the talk. In this way, we all going through serious levels of disruption, even in our personal lives. While courageous leaders say that pushing the boundaries is a smart, calculated risk, there are times when they also need to take a leap of faith -- it is in these leaps of faith where growth occurs and we inspire others.

10. Invest in lifelong learning -- General Michel is fortunate that the U.S. Air Force provides many opportunities for academic training and being on the move ensures he is constantly being exposed to different people, ideas and opportunities to stretch and actualize his potential. His parting advice to leaders of all industries: "Make lifelong learning something you believe in and invest in. The combination of personal commitment to making a constant investment in yourself and leveraging what your organization will afford you is where you become well-rounded and maximize the skills, attitudes and capabilities you bring to bear."

You can watch the full interview with Brigadier General John Michel here. Please join me and Michael Krigsman every Friday at 3PM EST as we host CXOTalk - connecting with thought leaders and innovative executives who are pushing the boundaries within their companies and their fields.

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The middle class’s missing $1.6 trillion | The Great Debate

The middle class's missing $1.6 trillion

The United States was the world's first middle-class nation, which was a big factor in its rapid growth.  Mid-19th-century British travelers marveled at American workers' "ductility of mind and the readiness…for a new thing" and admired how hard and willingly they labored. Abraham Lincoln attributed it the knowledge that "humblest man [had] an equal chance to get rich with everyone else."

Most Americans still think of themselves as middle class.  But the marketing experts at the big consumer goods companies are giving their bosses the unsentimental advice that the middle class is an endangered species. Restaurants, appliance makers, grocery chains, hotels are learning that they either have to go completely up-scale, or focus on bargains for the struggling and budget-conscious.

Current income surveys, for statistical reasons, usually segment families by broad categories, which obscure the recent radical shift of income to a thin stratum of the super-rich. Well-to-do people may buy $100 coffee pots, but the lion's share of the income growth has been going to folks with five houses and staff to make the coffee.

For the last 15 years, an international consortium of economists has been building data bases on the income shares of the richest people in the developed countries, based on pre-tax market income including capital gains and tax-exempt income, and excluding government transfers. The American data reveals the greatest inequality by far, followed by Great Britain.

The stunning income distribution has a remarkable symmetry.  In 2012, the top 10 percent captured half of all reported income. But the top 1 percent got almost half of that — 22.5 percent — while the top 10th of 1 percent (0.1 percent) captured half of that. All three are within a few decimal places of the previous highs — which occurred in 1928, just before the market crash that ushered in the Great Depression.

The percentages don't quite capture the violence of the skew.  The stock market implosion of the 1930s followed by World War II's strict price controls and high marginal taxes brought the top 1 percent's income share down to about 9 percent by the end of the war.  Executive and financial sector pay was quite restrained, even through the good times of the 1950s and 1960s, and the 1 percent's income share did not start to rise until the late 1970s. It took off for the stratosphere then — amid the oceans of cash sloshing around Wall Street during the 1980s leveraged buyout boom.

The sums involved are enormous. The difference between the 1 percent's income share in 1975 (8.9 percent) and today's 22.5 percent is 13.6 percent.  That additional share of personal income is worth $1.6 trillion.  Each year.

What can you buy with $1.6 trillion?  Well, it's more than the annual outlays for Social Security payments, and about twice as large as Defense Department appropriations.  It's enough to pay off the federal debt held by the public in about seven years.

To amass that incremental $1.6 trillion, the 1 percent took 68 percent of all personal income growth between 1993 and 2012. To be fair, those same folks lost a great deal of income during the 2008 financial collapse, because much of their income comes from financial assets. But during the recovery of 2009-2012, they took a whopping 95 percent of the income growth — so their relative income and wealth positions are nearly all the way back to their pre-2008 high.

The canonical retort to such musings is that all segments of society benefit from a well-fed and contented super-rich. They are the ones, the argument goes, who supply the high-octane financial fuel to maintain America's advantage in high technology, keep its job-creation machinery humming, and lay the foundation for solid long-term growth.

Unfortunately, that is not proved true in recent experience. Since financial markets were liberalized in the 1980s, the finance sector's income and debt has soared, income inequality has skyrocketed, and the world economy has flopped from crisis to crisis – the Savings and Loan fiasco, the petrodollar debacle, and the leveraged buyout  circuses of the 1980s; the "hot-money" driven currency crises and hedge-fund collapses of the 1990s, and the hallucinatory mortgage games of the 2000s.

The dangers of runaway finance have been getting some academic attention of late, as scholars have begun connecting the dots between the super-rich and financial instability.

The very rich do invest productively, of course, and are also interested in capital preservation — so large segments of their portfolios are invested in safe, AAA-rated assets. As their income soared, however, their appetite for safe assets greatly outstripped the available supply. so the financial industry dutifully set about creating allegedly top-quality assets out of whatever lower-quality paper was at hand.

Adair Turner, the former head of the British financial regulatory authority, has outlined the "complexification" of finance that gave rise to the insane derivative structures and synthetic portfolios that unraveled so dramatically in 2008.

Stephen Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubi, two senior economists at the Bank for International Settlements, have documented the "inverse U-shaped curve" of finance's contribution to the economy. The history of all developed countries shows that as finance employment rises, economic growth and productivity increases. But only up to a point. After that, continued growth of the finance sector often triggers falling growth and declining productivity.

The two authors also worked out a model of why this happens. As the financial sector grows more sophisticated, it competes with technology and manufacturing industries for the smartest and most ingenious engineers and mathematicians. At the same time, however, broad-gaged finance needs highly "pledgeable" assets that can be readily leveraged, like residential and commercial mortgages. (High-technology investing has a very high risk of failure, and so is the preserve of specialist venture-capital firms.)

The best and the brightest, they found, instead of creating new technology breakthroughs, become the servants of the super-rich — because they pay the most.  The  engineers devote themselves to increasing low-productivity, easily understandable assets in order to transmute them into new, highly complex, instruments that look super-safe, but often aren't. How to wreck an economy in three easy steps.

Reversing these realities, unfortunately, will take at least as much time as it did to create them. But we have to start somewhere and keep at it for a couple of decades.

The first step should be to continue to rein in the financial sector. Turner of the British financial authority, points out that a key founder of the "University of Chicago School" of free-market economists, Henry Simon, opposed almost all government regulation, except for the financial sector. Simon understood that very smart people applying high leverage to other people's money is an invitation to disaster, and so required tight regulation. The most important step today might be breaking up the mega-banks that emerged from the crash. Then they would be easier to police — and easier to indict.

Second should be to start rolling back the income shares of the very richest people by targeted taxation and other strategies, including radical tax simplification to reduce the legal cubbyholes for sheltering income. The economist Brad DeLong wonders why the middle classes haven't risen up and demanded fairer income distribution.

Reducing the top 1 percent's income share to, say, 14 or 15 percent, still much higher than the pre-1980 norm, would free up about $1 trillion for middle-class tax relief; higher minimum wages; pension, healthcare, and educational subsidies, or job-creating infrastructure construction.

That wouldn't solve all of our problems. But it would help put America back on course to realizing its original promise.

ILLUSTRATION (TOP): Matt Mahurin

PHOTO (INSERT 1): At least 20 private jet aircraft sit parked at the Friedman Memorial Airport during the Allen & Co Media Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho July 13, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

PHOTO (INSERT 2): A model presents a creation from the Oscar De La Renta Autumn/Winter 2013 collection during New York Fashion Week, February 12, 2013.

PHOTO (INSERT 3): A couple walk with Hermes shopping bags as they leave an Hermes store in Paris March 21, 2013. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

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Dubai Captivates the World With Dazzling Firework Display at Burj Khalifa to Mark the New Year | ASIA TODAY News & Events

DUBAI, UAE, Jan. 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The iconic New Year's Eve fireworks display by Emaar Properties, the global property developer, at Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building and Downtown Dubai, captivated the world and put the international spotlight on Dubai, alongside the largest fireworks display and celebrations held in the city at The Palm Jumeirah, The World Islands, and Burj Al Arab.

With millions of visitors - both residents and tourists - building the excitement in Downtown Dubai, the Burj Khalifa fireworks display was a true spectacle of artistic creativity. Ten stunningly different firework sequences on Burj Khalifa marked the run-up to a musical countdown for the New Year.

Each display also told the world a story - of the UAE's inspiring success, Dubai's positivity and ambition, and the design narrative of Burj Khalifa, which is choreographed to the captivating melody of symphonic orchestra music of Downtown Dubai, 'The Centre of Now.'

Abdulla Lahej, Group Chief Executive Officer, Emaar Properties, said: "The celebrations in Dubai now serve as a true benchmark for New Year's Eve galas across the world. Colourful, spectacularly planned, and creatively executed, the events also underline the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to ensure a positive, inspirational, and high-growth environment in the city, for people from around the world."

Starting off with a dramatic countdown through a display of effects racing up to the pinnacle of Burj Khalifa, 828 metres high, the fireworks began with spectacular sequences including a colourful salute to the nation with the colours of the UAE National Flag. Silver pearls lend an unmatched ambience in a sparkling celebration of Dubai's success, especially with its win to host the World Expo 2020. Another stunning display was the tribute to Burj Khalifa, with the fireworks evolving into petals, wrapping the tower much like the Hymenocallis desert flower, which inspired the design of the building.

In the grand finale, fireworks lit up every direction dramatically and a golden lattice formed across the sky. Rainbow effects filled all over Downtown Dubai as Dubai ushered in 2014.

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Mizuho Bank, Aeon Vietnam tie up for one-stop payment services- Nikkei Asian Review

http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Deals/Mizuho-Bank-Aeon-Vietnam-tie-up-for-onestop-payment-services

Mizuho Bank, Aeon Vietnam tie up for one-stop payment services

HANOI -- Mizuho Bank will establish a partnership with Aeon Vietnam, a subsidiary of Japanese supermarket operator Aeon, to provide comprehensive cash management and payment transaction services for the retailer.

     The partnership will be the first attempt to offer such services in Vietnam, where management of sales data has lagged, and it is expected to help modernize the country's retail sector.

     Mizuho Bank and its existing Vietnamese business partner, Vietcombank, will form a comprehensive alliance with Aeon Vietnam on Monday. The two banks will handle all cash management and payment transaction operations for supermarkets directly operated by Aeon Vietnam and for the 120 or so stores in Aeon Vietnam's first Aeon Mall, which will open in January 2014, in Ho Chi Minh City.

     Sales data will be managed comprehensively through point-of-sale systems to be installed in each store and which are capable of supporting credit card transactions. The banks will also offer other financial services, including direct deposit of employee salaries.

     The partnership will also issue an Aeon-Vietcombank debit card. To promote sales and enhance customer loyalty, the card will offer such perks as points based on purchase amounts and coupons.

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http://mobilebeta.reuters.com/nelson-mandela-from-apartheid-fighter-to-president

South Africa Mourns Mandela

By Tosin Sulaiman and Peroshni Govender JOHANNESBURG - South Africans united in mourning for Nelson Mandela on Friday, but while some celebrated his remarkable life with dance and song, others fretted that the anti-apartheid hero's death would leave the nation vulnerable again to racial and social tensions. President Jacob Zuma said Mandela would be buried on Dec. 15 at his ancestral home in the Eastern Cape. South Africans heard from Zuma late on Thursday that their first black president, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, had died peacefully at his Johannesburg home in the company of his family after a long illness. On Friday, the country's 52 million people absorbed the news that the statesman, a global symbol of reconciliation and peaceful co-existence, had departed forever. Zuma also announced Mandela would be honoured at a Dec. 10 memorial service at Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium, the site of the 2010 World Cup final. "We will spend the week mourning his passing. We will also spend it celebrating a life well lived," Zuma said. Mandela would be laid to rest at his ancestral village of Qunu, 700 km (450 miles) south of Johannesburg, in a plot where three of his children and other close family members are buried. Despite reassurances from public figures that Mandela's death at 95, while sorrowful, would not halt South Africa's advance from its apartheid past, there were those who expressed unease about the absence of a man famed as a peacemaker. "It's not going to be good, hey! I think it's going to become a more racist country. People will turn on each other and chase foreigners away," said Sharon Qubeka, 28, a secretary from Tembisa township. "Mandela was the only one who kept things together." Flags flew at half mast across the country, and trade was halted for five minutes on the Johannesburg stock exchange. But the mood was not all sombre. Hundreds filled the streets around Mandela's home in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, many singing songs of tribute and dancing. The crowd included toddlers carrying flowers, domestic workers still in uniform and businessmen in suits. Another veteran anti-apartheid campaigner, former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, said that like all South Africans he was "devastated" by Mandela's death. "Let us give him the gift of a South Africa united, one," Tutu said, holding a mass in Cape Town's St George's Cathedral. Tributes continued to pour in for Mandela, who had been suffering for nearly a year from a recurring lung illness dating back to the 27 years he spent in apartheid jails, including the Robben Island penal colony. U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron were among those who praised him. The White House said Obama would travel to South Africa next week to participate in memorial events. The flags of the 193 United Nations member states along First Avenue in Manhattan, New York were lowered at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) in honour of Mandela. The U.N. General Assembly observed a minute of silence. The loss was also keenly felt across the African continent. "We are in trouble now, Africa. No one will fit Mandela's shoes," said Kenyan teacher Catherine Ochieng, 32. Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, an old ally of Mandela's in the struggle against apartheid, hailed him as "a great freedom fighter". POLITICIANS NOW "NOTHING LIKE MANDELA" For South Africa, the death of its most loved leader comes at a time when the nation, which basked in global goodwill after apartheid ended, has been experiencing labour unrest, growing protests against poor services, poverty, crime and unemployment and corruption scandals tainting Zuma's rule. Many saw today's South Africa - the continent's biggest economy but also one of the world's most unequal - as still distant from the "Rainbow Nation" ideal of social peace and shared prosperity that Mandela had proclaimed on his triumphant release from prison in 1990. "I feel like I lost my father, someone who would look out for me," said Joseph Nkosi, 36, a security guard. Referring to Mandela by his clan name, he added: "Now without Madiba I feel like I don't have a chance. The rich will get richer and simply forget about us. The poor don't matter to them. Look at our politicians, they are nothing like Madiba." The crowd around Mandela's home in Houghton preferred to celebrate his achievement in bringing South Africans together. For 16-year-old Michael Lowry, who has no memory of the apartheid system that ended in 1994, Mandela's legacy means he can have non-white friends. "I hear stories that my parents tell me and I'm just shocked that such a country could exist. I couldn't imagine just going to school with just white friends," Lowry said. Tutu tried to calm fears that the absence of the man who steered South Africa to democracy might revive some of the ghosts of apartheid. "To suggest that South Africa might go up in flames – as some have predicted – is to discredit South Africans and Madiba's legacy," Tutu said on Thursday. "The sun will rise tomorrow, and the next day and the next ... It may not appear as bright as yesterday, but life will carry on." MAY HURT ANC IN LONG TERM Zuma and his ruling African National Congress face presidential and legislative elections next year which are expected to reveal discontent among voters about poverty and unemployment 20 years after the end of apartheid. But the former liberation movement is expected to maintain its dominance in South African politics. Mark Rosenberg, Senior Africa Analyst at the Eurasia Group, said that while Mandela's death might give the ANC a sympathy-driven boost for the next elections, it would hurt the party in the long term. He saw Mandela's absence "sapping the party's historical legitimacy and encouraging rejection by voters who believe the ANC has failed to deliver on its economic promises and become mired in corruption". Mandela rose from rural obscurity to challenge white minority rule - a struggle that gave the 20th century one of its most respected and loved figures. He was among the first to advocate armed resistance to apartheid in 1960, but was quick to preach reconciliation and forgiveness when the white minority began easing its grip on power 30 years later. He was elected president in all-race elections in 1994 after helping to steer the divided country towards reconciliation and away from civil war. Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, an honour he shared with F.W. de Klerk, the white Afrikaner president who released him in 1990. In 1999, Mandela handed over power to younger leaders better equipped to manage a modern economy, a rare voluntary departure from power cited as an example to African leaders. This made him an exception on a continent with a bloody history of long-serving autocrats and violent coups. (Additional reporting by Ed Cropley, Dave Dolan, Tiisetso Motsoeneng, Xola Potelwa and Stella Mapenzauswa in Johannesburg, Wendell Roelf in Cape Town, Lou Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols in New York, Brian Moonga in Lusaka.; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Matthew Tostevin, David Stamp and Giles Elgood) 

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The roadmap to China's evolving automotive market | ASIA TODAY News & Events

The second edition of NextGen Auto International China Summit will take place from 9 – 10 December at the Kerry Hotel in Shanghai's Pudong district. Co-organised by Messe Frankfurt (Shanghai) Co Ltd and the International Cooperation Centre of National Development and Reform Commission, the 2013 conference will focus on sustainable and globally-competitive solutions for China's automotive industry.

Attendees can expect to receive a wealth of knowledge on emerging global trends in energy-efficiency and smart technology. Through a series of business models, products, services as well as technological breakthroughs, NextGen Auto aims to facilitate a more profitable and sustainable future for all stakeholders in China's automotive market. During its 2012 edition, over 300 delegates attended, with professionals including OEMs, government policy makers, suppliers, dealers, aftermarket service providers and much more.

China is expected to lead the global market for the automotive industry in the coming years. The sheer size of the nation's automotive market has drawn interest from a number of key players in government policy as well as commercial development. But in order to grow the country's automotive market sustainably, a number of areas need to be properly addressed. Some of the topics of discussion to address these areas at NextGen Auto's 2013 edition include:

• E-mobility and electrification: What are the critical steps needed for faster market growth to be achieved?
• Hybrid vehicles and their potential for the passenger and commercial vehicle markets
• How can advanced fuels, hybrids, new materials and digital technology boost efficiency in commercial vehicles?
• Strategies for dealerships distributors: What new business and service markets are emerging?
• Digital marketing and social media: How can these powerful tools aid OEMs and dealerships?

The full list of speakers for 2013 is still in development. However over 35 influential industry experts have already confirmed their participation. Some of which include:

• Thomas Hajek, Board Member for Fiat Chrysler Group
• Boriana Lambreva, Senior Manager, Volkswagen (China)
• Martin Rosell, Managing Director, WirelessCar (Volvo)
• Klaus Dieter Breitschwert, Chairman, Bavarian Car Industry & Board Member, part of the German Federation for Motor Vehicle Trades and Repairs (ZDK)

Additionally, domestic policy and planning initiatives will be addressed by senior directors from China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC).

NextGen Auto International China Summit 2013 will be held concurrently with Automechanika Shanghai, Asia's largest event for auto parts, accessories, equipment and services, taking place from 10 – 13 December at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. For more information on the fee-based conference, please e-mail nextgenauto@hongkong.messefrankfurt.com

-end-

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Where on Earth will the waste go? | ASIA TODAY News & Events

Human waste production has multiplied tenfold in the last century. Rubbish – plastic bags, pizza boxes, empty beer cans, tinfoil, bubble wrap, old mattresses, rusty machinery, broken bottles, spent batteries, stale sandwiches, wilting salads and abandoned newsprint – is being generated faster than any other environmental pollutants, including greenhouse gases. And the problem will go on getting bigger until some time in the next century.

Daniel Hoornweg of the University of Ontario and Chris Kennedy of the University of Toronto in Canada and Perinaz Bhada-Tata of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates argue in Nature that the combination of urban growth and material affluence is creating a throwaway problem that won't go away. The average person in the US throws away his (or her) own body weight in rubbish every month. The detritus linked to modern living has not only grown tenfold in a century; by 2025 it will double again.

Solid waste disposal has become one of any modern city's biggest costs. Landfill sites near Shanghai, in Rio de Janeiro, and in Mexico City typically receive 10,000 tonnes of waste a day. The world now has more than 2,000 waste incinerators, some able to burn 5,000 tonnes a day, creating attendant problems of ash and air-polluting fumes.

Landfill waste is of course also a notorious source of methane – a potent greenhouse gas – but the authors are primarily concerned with the simple problems posed by the increasing volume of affluent society's rejected stuff.

It's a city thing, they say. Country dwellers don't buy so much packaged food, don't have factories and don't throw so much food away. City dwellers on average generate twice as much waste; the more affluent urbanites throw away four times as much.

The three researchers – an expert in energy systems, a civil engineer and an urban waste consultant – say that in 1900 there were 220 million people in the cities. That was 13% of the planet's population, and these townsfolk produced 300,000 tonnes of discarded stuff every day.

By 2000, there were 2.9 billion people in cities – 49% of the world's population – creating more than three million tonnes of solid waste per day. By 2025, it will be twice that = enough to fill a line of rubbish trucks 5,000 kilometres long every day.

International idiosyncrasies

Some countries are more profligate than others. Japan's citizens produce about one third less, per person, than US citizens, even though the gross domestic product per capita is about the same. China's solid waste generation is expected to go from 520,550 tonnes per day to 1.4 million by 2025.

"As a country becomes richer, the composition of its waste changes," the authors say. "With more money comes more packaging, imports, electronic waste and broken toys and appliances. The wealth of a country can readily be measured, for example, by how many mobile phones it discards."

Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata are the authors of a 2012 World Bank report in which they projected a world dustbin collection of 6 million tonnes a day by 2025. They calculate that under a business-as-usual scenario waste will grow with population and affluence as the century wears on, with increasing growth in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and by 2100 it will exceed 11 million tonnes a day and peak sometime in the next century. But this scenario is not inevitable.

"With lower populations, denser, more resource-efficient cities and less consumption (along with higher affluence) the peak could come forward to 2075 and reduce in intensity by more than 25%," they say. This would save around 2.6 million tonnes per day.

SOURCE / Climate News Network

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