Small-Scale and Spiderlike - On Plastic Policy and Being Part of an Ecosystem

Last week I attended Plastic Waste: The Next Steps Forward, doing my part as a virtual attendee to keep the Zoom rooms chat active from my home office in Williams Lake. The day-long policy workshop was hosted at SFU’s Vancouver campus and brought together researchers, policy analysts, and circular economy practitioners from Japan, Europe, Quebec, the US, and Canada. Global perspectives in the morning, EPR policy before lunch, circular business models in the afternoon. It was a full day, and I was glad to be invited - reconnecting with folks I’ve known for years and making new connections with the movers and shakers in the recycling world - everyone oriented towards solutions.

It was the first time I’ve participated in a discussion like that from outside a municipal or provincial position. No longer a policy person, now bringing an entrepreneurial lens, a climate action educator's lens, a grassroots experimenter's lens, all at once. 

It wasn't the complexity of the challenge that struck me, though it is complex. It was the ecosystem of solutions required to address plastic waste. Niches. Roles. Connections. Scales. In the case studies and presentations, the relational and connective tissue was visible - a network of relationships, not a single solution. Even at scale, there is no silver bullet. The people working at the highest levels of this problem - on federal plastics policy, France's EPR system, California's zero waste plan - they know they're building something that governs connectivity, not chasing a singular fix. It’s the nature of policy, to set the parameters that a system runs within. 

In ecology, an ecosystem functions well when there is [bio]diversity and niche specialization. When niches go unfilled, systems become more vulnerable. It's not just about making sure all roles are filled - it's about what flows between them. Resources. Information. Energy. A well-connected ecosystem redistributes what it has across all its layers. The connections are the mechanism. 

Think of a spider: building a web where it's needed, for the time it's needed, catching what it can, and deriving nutrition from that. It doesn't run the forest. She fills a role no other creature fills in quite the same way. Small-scale recycling works like that. The big policy conversations - the ones happening at SFU last week - help identify where, for whom, and for what materials small-scale recycling can respond. They generate the signal. Small-scale operations read it and act, reaching the places where recycling isn't economically feasible at industrial scale, handling the material types that fall through larger streams or aren’t yet regulated, and teaching. Building curiosity, shifting how people relate to the resources moving through their hands. Everything learned at that ground level? It can flow back up to feed policy discussions, proposals, program design decisions, communications campaigns. 

Delve operates close to the ground. An entirely intentional decision. I needed to be within arms reach of impact - having the conversations, handling the plastic, learning alongside others about how we got here and how we might design our way somewhere better. It's a specific and necessary role in a system that works at a diversity of scale and pace.

If you've ever looked at a small-scale solution and thought: not big enough to make a difference… I'd ask you to zoom out. Not to see how small it is but rather to see the ecosystem it's part of and the unique function that can only be achieved via the small-scale. One of the great things about small-scale, is that it’s often repeatable.

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As usual, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, via email at emma@delverecycled.ca, check out the Delve online store and site at delverecycled.ca, or follow along on social media @delverecycled.