A look back to 12 months ago reminded me of the concerns expressed by manufacturers that serve our industry. Obviously, while many were just concerned about falling profits and how that might affect their shareholders, the wider worry was that a lack of investment in research and development – combined with a lack of lending by the bankers and financiers who caused the economic crisis in the first place – might undermine the development of new products at the very time when our environment needed them most. So how do things look now?
The answer is that things look a lot better than predicted. While there have been some casualties among manufacturers, it was also the case that, in certain sectors, there were (and still are) too many manufacturers for the size of the global market.
So where does that take us? As the world exclusive cover story on the Caterpillar corporation in our March/April issue explained, the recent turmoil has got some of the smartest engineering and marketing minds in the manufacturing sector looking for new markets. The Cat product line has had the word ‘construction’ at its heart (alongside mining) for the last 60 years. Sales of machines into the scrap, waste and recycling sectors tended to happen, if not by accident, then certainly without any specific marketing effort. While human beings continue to multiply at an unsustainable rate, it could be argued that ‘construction’ will always be needed but that without funding or market confidence (still in short supply judging by recent events in Greece) it won’t happen and then new machines are not required.
In contrast, new equipment to handle waste and recyclable materials is essential if we’re not to drown under the mountain of waste we’ve created. Now, just two years after a major restructuring programme, Cat engineers have shown what can be achieved with some ‘refocusing’ with the launch of the diesel-electric ‘D7E’. It’s early days yet, but fuel savings of 20% seem possible compared with hydrostatic transmissions.
In the 2009 Transport and Collection special, WMW had a world exclusive story about the Volvo/Geesink Norba diesel electric ‘hybrid’ drive refuse collection vehicle (RCV) working for Renova AB in Gothenburg, Sweden. Twelve months on, several hybrids are now in service elsewhere. As you can read in this issue, Volvo has now also got an easy-entry low floor cab designed specifically for waste collection operations. And, we have several other ‘exclusives’ lined up in the next few issues too.
So the bottom line? That well-worn phrase, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going,’ sets the tone for the year ahead in my view. Or as the father of evolutionary science, Charles Darwin, might have put it, ‘the fittest will survive’.
So if you are still in need of some direction? Based on our current performance, your own personal copy of Waste Management World has got to be a good place to start, surely?
Malcolm Bates
Collection & Transport correspondent
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