Sustainable City Policies - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 206

areas; and lastly, for whole settlements such as Eco-towns or cities. Although these
polices may be useful on their own, they become far more effective when they are
bundled into comprehensive strategies to improve sustainability, especially those
that are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for effective mitigation of
climate changes cannot be achieved by individual actions. Indeed as the quotation
from O'Riordan ( 2004 ) shows, sustainability should be seen as a revolutionary goal
embracing all aspects of life. Its advocates argue that we need a new form of devel-
opment that embraces sustainable ideals.

6﻽2 Trends in Reduction, Recycling and Re-Use

Until the Industrial Revolution the amount of waste generated in cities was rela-
tively small and easily handled. But the increasing growth of cities from the eigh-
teenth century led to increasing worries about the amount of waste, especially from
human and animal faeces, and its effect on human health. As the previous chapter
has shown, the disposal of faecal matter and household garbage seemed to be solved
by the development of municipal waste disposal systems from the mid-nineteenth
century in the developed world; a century later a new crisis emerged. The amounts
of household and business waste in towns increased exponentially, a consequence
of the increasing affluence of citizens, the acquisition of more products, a throw-
away mentality and the increasing amounts of packaging, especially plastics, used
to wrap new goods.
Concern about this growing amount of waste led to the one of the earliest trends
in sustainable policies in the 1980s through the adoption of the so-called 'three R's
of sustainability', namely reduction, re-cycling and re-use. This phrase became a
mantra that was used to promote a reduction in the demand for new resources, to
re-cycle more, and to re-use as many of the goods and waste as possible. Although
individual citizens were often the first to make the commitment to engage in these
more sustainable practices, increasing numbers of companies and governments at
national and municipal levels have adopted such measures in the last few decades.
Some have used advertising campaigns to promote such initiatives, while in Swe-
den the G￶teborg Eco-handbook raised public awareness and knowledge when the
city provided it to over 400 thousand households in 1992. The publication described
how residents could become more environmentally aware and provided tips in how
to engage in more sustainable practices. Elsewhere, the new emphasis upon envi-
ronmental awareness and sustainability has led to increasing research on the topic
as well as courses in universities. In addition it has become a growing part of the
school curriculum in many countries (Lee and Williams 2006 ). This has led some
parents to follow the leads advocated by their more environmentally aware children;
The initial solutions for dealing with urban waste after the Industrial Revolution,
other than faecal matter which was disposed of through sewers, was by incineration
plants and landfills, although these have their own environmental problems. In the
case of the former, the first incinerator in the U.K. was built in Nottingham in 1874,
followed 11 years later by the first example in the U.S.A. on Governors Island, New