Kickstart: Are you ready for a global 'polycrisis'?

We've had to deal with a lot during the past couple of years: the pandemic, supply chains, the war in Ukraine, inflation, extreme weather, to name a few. Now there's a word to describe the state of the world: polycrisis.

The word has been mentioned a few times in the past but is in the spotlight this week as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, adopted it for its 2023 Global Risks Report for "a new descriptor to define the scale of the problems the world is facing."

"A majority of respondents to the [global risks perception survey] saw little hope of a quick solution to the many crises the world is facing," the forum said in a news release on the new report. "When asked to characterize what they expected to see 10 years from now, 20 percent said 'progressive tipping points and persistent crises would lead to catastrophic outcomes.'"

The Davos meeting also featured a report noting that the world is more reliant on using virgin materials than it did in 2018, rather than becoming more circular.

Beyond planning for the unexpected — or living in a constant state of panic — consultants said the world must do more to work together to prepare for and respond to risks.

The Every Bottle Back program from the American Beverage Association and the Recycling Partnership provides funding to support the expansion of recycling programs at several locations in the U.S., and we don't write about every donation. But I was struck by a news release out Jan. 17 that $141,000 from the initiative would go to Nashville's municipal recycling, joining a $75,800 grant from the state of Tennessee to buy recycling carts.

It turns out that Nashville, a town of half a million people, has curbside collection of recycling only once a month. The expansion will see it collecting recycling every other week. The Tennessean reports that the city sees the outdated recycling program as part of the reason why Nashville residents produce twice as much solid waste as the national average while recycling half the national average.

Urban Green Lab Executive Director Tod Lawrence told the local paper that the percentage of Nashville waste sent to landfills rose to 83 percent from 69 percent in the last five years.

This is the second time Nashville has announced plans to expand recycling to twice a month. A previous attempt in 2020 was canceled due to budget issues.

This time the city says the program will double pickups starting Jan. 30.

Also just to update an item from July 2022 in Kickstart, when I noted that my hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich., would use funds from a $790,000 grant for a "feet on the street" program. Essentially, the program covers spot inspections of recycling bins to make sure users don't dump nonrecyclable items in them.

Violators receive warning stickers noting the improper item and instructions on how to fix it.

The result from the two-month program? A 20 percent reduction in contaminants in the recycling stream, the city says. Plastic bags were most typical items found where they don't belong.