Kovalam Cleanup started on January 28th 2004.

In one weeks cleanup huge loads of discarded plastic water bottles were fished out of the ponds, wetlands and homesteads.

The Zero Waste Centre supported by the Kerala Hotels and Restaurants Association, Kerala Tourism and Indian Coast Guards have embarked on a major cleanup drive at Kovalam. The months of February and March have been declared Cleanup Kovalam months. Organizing awareness programmes, setting up of filtered drinking water kiosks and distributing paper bags and cups to keep the plastics off Kovalam would be part of the programme.

In one week of cleanup which started January 28th 2004, the regular dumping sites behind the Light House beach, the Samudra beach and the Guest House beach have been targeted. 225 sacks of discarded plastic water bottles totaling more than 37500 bottles in number have been fished out of the ponds, wetlands and private properties. Another 100 sacks containing

discarded glass bottles, broken glasses, tube lights and bulbs , other plastics and mostly mucky materials have also been fished out.

Twenty two brands of plastic bottles including the major brands Aquafina, Kinley, Classic, Bisleri, Golden Valley were fished out in abundance. Earlier in October, Greenpeace had organized a cleanup and symbolically packed and transported sacks of PET bottles to Coke and Pepsi demanding "Extended Producer Responsibility". This time the Cleanup has been very exhaustive and is intended to showcase the need for immediate and serious interventions from all stake holders for stopping this dumping culture and a message to the bottled water companies to take responsibility of this waste. In the coming weeks shops, restaurants and hoteliers in Kovalam would be supplied with paper bags and paper cups as part of the awareness drive to stop plastic material use. Use of packaged water would be discouraged and water kiosks selling clean filtered water is also being setup. We shall keep you updated.

Waste is something that is rejected as useless. These are items that are either so badly designed that they can neither be repaired, reused, re-sourced through composting, or safely recycled. Wastes are also created when we dump various items together in a manner that they cannot be easily separated or in a manner that renders them useless even if they are separated. Much of our resources end

up as wastes primarily because we do not separate them before discarding. For instance when we throw in paper and toxic wastes with bio wastes the entire garbage becomes toxic. The bio wastes then cannot be composted because the compost would be poisonous. The paper cannot be recycled because it becomes wet and dirty for anyone to pick it up and send it to a recycler. Wastes typically consists of Bio degradable substances (food wastes, flowers, garden wastes etc) Plastics (bags, bottles, toys and other items, containers and so on) Glass Paper and Cardboard Metal Items Wood Items Toxics such as batteries etc Composites that are made up of a combination of two or more of the above item.

The conventional methods of handling garbage is termed waste management. That is this approach sees all garbage generated as useless and then goes on to manage these wastes by devising technologies to collect it, transport it, bury it, dump it or burn it. Landfills, Incineration or burning of wastes, centralized composting and recycling are some of the ways of solid waste management.

Landfills Landfills are those assigned places or holes in the ground where wastes are dumped. Low lying areas are usually selected for this purpose. In developed countries, landfills are holes in the ground lined with plastic sheets and concrete to prevent pollution of the environment due to the poisons that these wastes would release during decomposition.

The poisons from a landfill leak out from the sides in the form of a black, smelly toxic liquid called leachate This liquid eventually escapes into the ground surrounding the landfills and contaminate the nearby and underground water sources.

Landfills also lend to air pollution and attract vermin and other disease causing germs. Landfill fires, a common incident for landfills releases heavy metals and other toxic substances such as dioxins and furans into the atmosphere.

Landfills are a flawed technology and a cancer on the land. Landfills waste resources and compete directly with beneficial resource conserving enterprises such as reuse, recycling, composting. Even so-called state-of-the-art landfills merely delay, rather than eliminate, massive pollution to groundwater and are a

leading contributor to global warming. Waste can and should be designed out of our industrial system. Waste is not inevitable. Nor are landfills.

Incineration

and

Open

Burning

Conventional waste disposal relies significantly on burning garbage, either in the open (common in India) or in machines. The machines are known as incinerators. Incinerators are wasteful because they burn resources that rightfully ought to be conserved for further use. They are also inherently polluting because incineration involves the combustion of diverse items, they inevitable release poisons such as heavy metals and cancer causing chemicals including dioxins and furans. Advanced pollution control equipment cost a lot of money and merely trap the pollutants concentrating them in fly ash and the bottom ash. Highly contaminated ash then has to be disposed of in specialized landfills, which will also eventually leak.

Centralised

Composting

In this method, mixed waste is allowed to sit for days or weeks before entering the compost process. During this time, poisons from the toxic components of the waste stream contaminate the biodegradable substances that will be composted to form soil conditioners. Hence plastics and other gross impurities, which are usually removed in other types of composting, are by this time too dirty to be viable raw materials for any recycler and end up in a landfill. Recycling Recycling has some pitfalls. The most important of them is that not all materials can be recycled. Especially toxic substances should not be recycled because when you recycle a hazardous substance, you also recycle the hazard. Take for instance recycling of PVC. So many poisonous substances go into the production of PVC. These poisons are inevitably released during recycling. Some materials that are recycled ought not to have been produced in the first place. Technologies to recycle without much harm to the environment or human health may exist. However, what is technically possible may not always be efficient or economical. Perhaps the greatest drawback of recycling is that it does not in anyway discourage the use of inherently, unsustainable material especially when safer and sustainable alternatives exist.

As human populations and material use continue to increase, the natural systems that sustain us are suffering from accelerated degradation. Zero Waste is a new planning approach for the 21st Century that seeks to redesign the way that resources and materials flow through society, taking a 'whole system' approach. It is both a 'back end' solution that maximizes recycling and minimizes waste, and a design principle that ensures that products are made to be reused, repaired or recycled back into nature or the marketplace. Zero Waste embodies approaches that enable rapid waste reduction outcomes,

breakthrough strategies rather than incremental change.

Zero Waste challenges the whole idea of endless consumption without needing to say so, and it enables even those who are locked into the system to challenge their own behavior in a positive way without immediately threatening it. Zero Waste poses a fundamental challenge to 'business as usual' by challenging the economic incentives in our political and economic system that reward waste. And Zero Waste addresses, through job creation and civic participation, increasing wastage of human resources and erosion of democracy.

Hence while elsewhere waste goes up in smoke in expensive incinerators or goes down the leachate drain in mega land fills, the same pile of trash throws up a range of raw materials for new products, exciting financial opportunities, and better jobs.

From its inefficient uncompetitive former alternatives, zero waste rechannelises the flow of resources through our societies with marked and substantial environmental, social and economic benefits.

Opting for zero waste means we forgo the entire concept of waste. Zero waste works from this belief.

Resources are used for creation of a product or commodity usually designed for time-bound use, after which the product is rendered useless and ends up as waste while the process of production also generates waste. But Zero waste nips the creation of waste at the very stage of the resource. It changes the way resources flow through our society and communities.

Clean production, environmental friendly designs, and products eliminate creation of waste. At the end of the pipe, so to say, zero waste lines up facilities like resource recovery, composting, and waste to wealth ideas to tackle the waste generated.

Walking the zero waste way has other added gains too. Considerable saving on water, energy, resources and landfill space makes it an optimum environmental and sustainable option. Zero waste presupposes the involvement of the local community in its day-to-day processes. Hence it directly leads to the creation of employment opportunities in a society otherwise at loggerheads trying to create new avenues of employment. Thus the zero waste approach shows how this far reaching environmental progress will be achieved by just impacting change at one single point: where and how we empty our bins.

Material Substitution or the efficient use of materials is one way of achieving the goal of Zero waste. The Zero Waste approach considers waste as the visible face of inefficiency. An efficient system should have sustainable movement of materials. This assumes that material would be consumed, material would change form, and material would become discards.

In a responsible community that is committed to sustainable development, materials or resources should be efficiently used. This means that the selection of material should be ethically justified in terms of its impact on the environment and the economy.

Secondly, as materials will be subject to change it has to take an ethical, economic and efficient path. This means that the conversion should be rewarding in terms of value addition, local economic benefits and employment generation and should not be a burden on the environment. For instance, most of the manufacturing processes today are automated, polluting, energy and capital intensive and not at all labour intensive. At the same time the manufacturing products from traditional material like coconut tree (wood, coir, shell, fiber, leaves etc) has always been labour intensive and directly beneficial.

Thirdly, the material once used will be discarded. The discarding process should also be ethical, economical and efficient. For instance, in the case of the coconut shell, the used coconut shell product can still yield carbon black or be burnt for fuel or can still be used for other coconut shell products. Moreover, the disposal process is non-polluting as these materials are biodegradable and add to the biomass. On the other hand the disposal of a plastic bottle or a tetra-pack packaging is practically impossible without harming the environment or human health.

It is hence imperative that any Zero Waste programme should look at proper resource use through material substitution.

Around the world progressive communities and governments as well as innovative business enterprises have already put on the mantle of zero waste.

The entire concept was still in its bare infancy when Canberra, capital of Australia, in 1996 adopted the Zero Waste strategy and the goal was that by 2010 no waste would go into a landfill. Today they are well within this path towards zero waste.

The government owns the entire infrastructure in Canberra and all they do is franchise these facilities to the various industrial interests to use these resources. All that these enterprises need do is to reuse projects or to take them out as material resources for recycling or for composting.

It was from Canberra that the idea spread to New Zealand. Here 38% of the municipalities will have achieved the goal of Zero Waste by 2015. Initially the New Zealand Zero Waste Trust provides a grant. But the essential blue print of the same has to be developed within the local community-their officials, engineers, and managers. An estimated 40,000 jobs will be created over this entire ten-year period with

the conversion of local transfer units into resource recovery centers and by the predicted spurt of reuse and recycling businesses all over.

Across the seas, the idea has found eager emulators in California. Del Norte and Santa Cruz, two counties in California have adopted Zero Waste strategies. Even more laudable are the efforts of companies here like Hewlett Packard and Mad River Brewing who have actually seen the bottom line. While the former has achieved an impressive 90% reduction in their waste stream, the latter has managed to cut down 93%. Canada is also definitely on the path to Zero waste. Here the Nova Scotia province is cutting down on landfills by almost 50%.

The idea is over sixteen years old. And all over it seems to be generating much excitement and enthusiasm. By far, this has established that waste management at the backend alone is a limited proposition. And all over the natural environment is becoming a primary driver of a healthy political action and behavioral change. Evidence from all over also suggests that the huge challenges that are present can be met and that the long-term benefits are enormous.

Bio Degradable Discards

The study Towards Zero Waste Kovalam (downloadable pdf) revealed that hotels, restaurants, petty shops, bakeries, provision stores, general stores and coconut vendors together generate about 6 tonnes of bio-degradable waste every day during the peak season. Of this 4 tonnes of bio-discards are from more than 100 hotels and restaurants.

Biogasification (Biomethanation or anaerobic digestion) was proposed and accepted as the most possible option for handling the bio-discards in Kovalam. Subsequently, a feasibility study was also done, with a more accurate quantification of the waste and its composition.

Detailed enquiries were done regarding biogas plants. The biogas plants running at Seaface Hotel, the ITDC and the IHMCT, Samudhra Beach Kovalam were studied. Plants in other places including the prototype models at the Vivekanada Centre, Kanyakumari was also studied. The Dheenabandhu model biogas plant, which is running smoothly at the Sea face Hotel was found to a more cost-effective and traditional model.

Segregation Proper segregation of this bio-discard is fundamental to handling the waste issue. The success of a biogas plant will fully depend on the proper implementation of segregation, and it being taken up as a practice and habit in the hotels, restaurants and other establishments. A two-bin segregation scheme is suggested - one for the bio-discards and the other for the rest of the discards, both recyclables and the non-recyclables.

Awareness and Training Hotels, Restaurants and other establishments need to be given awareness classes and training sessions for both their managerial staff as well as the operational staff, with specific focus on the staff in the kitchen and cleaning work. This should be done with the active participation of the KHRA. It was also felt that segregation and clean management practices of discards need to be incorporated as part of the accreditation schemes of the Tourism Department as well as the KHRA. Establishment of the bio-gas plant/plants Regarding establishment of biogas plants, various options have been proposed.

The KHRA / a society formed for the very purpose can set up a centralized bio-gas facility, the regulated bio-discard can then be taken over to this facility to produce gas /electricity.

The Venganoor/Vizhinjam Panchayaths can put up a bio-gas facility owned by the panchayath or self-help group/groups and the bio-gas/electricity generated can be used by them for some mini-industrial activity that they can plan, on a symbiotic basis along with this plant, or sold to some hotels. Alternatively, the SHGs can also take up the running of the plant for the hotels/restaurants.

These options could be taken as individual systems or in combinations. The action plan was accepted by the Tourism Department and they have decided to part support the projects financially. As of now, there are three sizes of biogas plants that are considered. They are the 10 cu.m, 15 cu.m and 25 cu.m plants. The Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology (IHMCT), a Government owned institution near the Samudhra Beach, have set up their own biogas facility and a Resource Recovery Facility. Biogas plants can also a source of income to the SHGs as they produce good quality digested matter in the form of sludge which is excellent manure and has commercial value.

NON BIODEGRADABLE DISCARDS

In Kovalam about 4340 mineral water bottles, mostly in crushed and unusable form, about 2500 plastic carry bags, nearly 3000 plastic milk sachets, about 75 plastic cups are ending up as discards in streams, burnt in the open and dumped in the bushes, the beach and the sea on a daily basis. The menace that plastic can cause to human health and environment is more evident here than in the literature, which we often prefer to turn to. One can say that the tourism industry has much to lose, if immediate and concerted action is not taken against this menace. Apart from plastic, there are glass, metal tins and parts, cardboard boxes, cloths, cotton etc which are discarded in Kovalam every day.

Many of these materials have a very good reuse market value, especially glass bottles, some plastic bottles, cardboard cartons, metal items etc and should be sent to the secondary selling market, which thrives in the city of Thiruvananthapuram (mainly from Chalai).

A large part of these discards can be recycled. But identifying the recyclable from the non-recyclable is a question of technicality and one needs to be an expert or there must be a number code which identifies the type of the plastic material as LDPE, HDPE, PVC, PS, PETE etc. But the clearly better option is to reduce the use and disposal of these materials as much as possible.

A third category, mostly the Mineral Water Bottles ( which the manufacturer forces to Crush after Use ) , the Plastic Carry Bags, tetra pack and other plastic coated plates and the Plastic Cups can neither be reused nor recycled and hence need to be totally phased out from use. Sustainable substitutes to these must be introduced, preferably with materials that are locally available, like paper bags, plates and cups from leaves like palmyra, banana etc, coconut shells and paper. Bags made from cloth, tailor waste, paper, coir, jute should be good substitutes for the plastic materials that are to phased out. Alternate good water supply options also need to be explored.

The following action plans were decided upon for handling the non-biodegradable discards

A Resource Recovery Park A Resource Recovery Park is in simple terms a centre where all the nonbiodegradables can be brought in, separated into the reusables, recyclables, remanufacturables and can be redirected to those agencies which would use/recycle them. This may sound similar to the secondary seller, but is a more planned and organized extension of the same, as the RRP also acts as a local and direct repository of materials that have been used but cleaned up and ready for reuse. The primary purpose of an RRP would be to recover resource to the maximum. The RRP can be setup by any agency, who may be interested in this. Self-Help Groups in the panchayaths can also set this up and run it on a profit. The Venganoor Panchayath has come up with one such proposal to setup the park and have included the stake holders contribution in their 10th five year plan.

Awareness and Training - Awareness on the use and hazards of plastic need to be imparted to the local community, hotels, restaurants and establishments. Training on use reduction, material handling, setting up RRP etc also need to be done. A Proper two-bin Segregation and Collection system is being designed to lead all the discarded non-biodegradable materials to the Resource Recovery Park (RRP) . Proper planning of the collection and redirection mechanism would help much in making it a viable and profit-making center apart from recovering precious resources. One resource person from the ZWT Shibu K Nair has been trained on Zero Waste at the Ecology center, Berkeley to coordinate, plan and train SHGs in setting up and running the RRP.

Awareness and Campaign for Zero Waste Kovalam Sustainable Tourism is so much dependent on the materials use and ethical conduct of the tourist and the hosts as much as on other factors. Both the Tourist and the Hosts must be made aware of the potential threats posed by the use of polluting

materials, like mineral water bottles, plastic carry bags, plastic cups and other toxic materials. Tourist, both domestic and foreign must be instructed to respect the right of the local community to keep their locality neat and unpolluted. The Zero Waste Kovalam can go as an icon, that tells the tourist from all over the world this message. It is imperative that the Tourism Department, the travel agencies, the tourism promotion agencies, hotels, restaurants and other establishments, the local panchayaths and other stake holders participate and supplement this process. A well-planned awareness and campaign programme through media, posters, banners, exhibitions, roadside displays, sign-boards, pamphlets, conduct guides, need to be implemented with the help of newspapers, information desks, websites, road shows, travel marts, travel brochures of Government and private agencies and hotel room instructions etc.

Phase-in Alternate Drinking Water Schemes - Alternate drinking water schemes that can replace the mineral water supply, should be introduced. For this the following suggestions are made.

Introduce Dispenser Bottles large 20 litre and more cans, which can dispense mineral water in bottles Introduce that Ayurvedic the Water tourist guaranteed can by an be agency provided such as the from local hotels.

panchayath.

Introduce Water Kiosks Well maintained water kiosks in specific corners in Kovalam, can guarantee that use and dumping of the smaller mineral water bottles is avoided.

Phase-out Disposable-Plastic Use The use of Disposable-type plastic material need to be immediately phased out, as it has been identified in the Stake Holders meeting as the one creating the maximum nuisance to Kovalam. This will include Plastic carry bags and Mineral Water bottles and plastic drinking cups. This is being taken up with the Tourism Ministry and the Government of Kerala.

Periodical Clean-up Inspite of these measures it is expected that Kovalam would need to have a periodical cleanup operation, which can mobilize not just the local stake holders and the panchayath but can be made eventful with the help of even the tourists who would wish to volunteer.

PIONEER PAPER UNIT The Pioneer Paper Centre

The Pioneer Paper Centre tucked away beyond a coconut grove produces marvelously ornate shopping bag made of paper, dustbins crafted entirely out of strips of paper woven together having seen the products popping up here and there, I could hardly wait to see the center where they design such innovative things.

A tiring climb up the road from the Hotel Management College (another waste to wealth center) brought me to the highway leading to Trivandrum. Barely 50 metres away I could see the autorickshaw stand that I was told was the landmark for the paper center, the point where Id have to enter the lane that would

lead up to the center. It led up all right! A steep, sharp incline, with little more than the characteristic red soil to grip my feet on.

The center itself is housed in a pleasant little barn made entirely out of natural materials, incidentally. From a distance, you can hear the sounds of young women chatting and laughing busily. When I finally wheezed my way to the top, I saw them sitting in orderly rows and chatting to each other over their shoulders, as their hands busily rolled, folded, pasted or cut paper. Brown paper, waste paper, hand-made paper there was paper EVERYWHERE!

The paper center is a truly brilliant part of the ZWK jigsaw for one, it uses up the paper that is segregated from the waste in other participating projects. For another, it gives the local women an outlet for their creativity, and a means to earn money for the project!

They started out in January 2003, making standard-sized and ordinary-shaped paper bags, to replace plastic in the market place. Slowly, as they have gained confidence, they have started experimenting with their ideas, and developed innovative paper products; they now make bags of all shapes and sizes, and their repertoire now encompasses all kinds of products including paper beads woven into jewelry!

They have started processing commercial orders too for instance, theyre supplying paper bags to be used as disposal bags in all rooms at Hotel Sea Face. Theyve been getting orders for Workshops and Seminars and the Tourism department recently ordered 2500 bags.

Our Current Linear Wasting System

A costly one-way street

Our current production systems are linear, designed as if there are no limits to our natural resources. Products are born of environmentally-destructive activities such as clearcutting, strip mining and drilling, which result in soil erosion, habitat loss, and severe air, soil, and water contamination. We as taxpayers unwittingly encourage this wasteful and polluting behavior through governmental subsidies at three different stages: (1) When resources are extracted to make the product, financial incentives and tax breaks are given to industries that extract virgin resources. (2) When toxins enter our air and water

supplies during the manufacturing process, the taxpayer helps pay to clean up these messes through programs such as the federal Superfund program. (3) At the end of the products lives, taxpayers pay again for the cleanup of toxins, which leak into the groundwater from landfills and billow into the air from incinerators.

An environmentally and economically sustainable system where resources are kept in the production cycle
Rather than looking at our production systems as one way and linear, we can redesign them to be cyclical, as in nature, where there is no such thing as waste and materials are kept in the production cycle. Zero Waste is emerging as a paradigm shift, a new, comprehensive socio-technical system that addresses our resource use from product design to disposal. Click on each of the Zero Waste components to read more about the Zero Waste System.

Zero Waste System:

Eco-Cycle 2005. Contact Eco-Cycle to use graphics and/or text.

Changing the Rules of the Game

We need to put policies and practices in place that favor environmentally and economically sustainable practices over wasteful, polluting, and ultimately costly practices. Such policies would include creating financial incentives for businesses and residents to recycle more and create less waste, banning toxic products from landfills or incinerators, prohibiting the sale of unnecessarily toxic or polluting products, essentially putting policies in place that make it easy to recover materials instead of waste them.

Shifting Taxpayer Subsidies Away From Wasteful and Polluting Industries and Into Supporting Environmentally-Friendly Practices
Federal tax subsidies created more than 100 years ago to spur our change from an agrarian society to an industrialized society still exist, giving a financial incentive to industries to make products from virgin materials. As long as these subsidies remain in place, the devastation of the environment will continue. These are not paltry sums driving todays resource extraction bonanzaaccording to the report, Welfare for Waste, direct subsidies to the timber, hard-rock mining, and energy industries reach $2.6 billion per year in taxpayers funds.

Design for the Environment (DFE)

Its time to stop waste before it happens at the designers desk. Instead of designing products without regard for the amount or type of resources used, the products toxicity, or the products eventual recovery, under DFE, all products and packaging will be manufactured with the use of non-toxic materials, and designed for either reuse, recycling or composting.

Clean Production
Under the current system, the fastest and cheapest production methods win out above the health and safety of the workers, the community, and the environment. Companies unwilling to meet the environmental and worker protection standards in the developed world have simply relocated to exploit the workers and the environment of developing countries. By providing incentives for clean production methods, we can discourage this fight to the bottom mentality and award efforts to protect workers and the environment.

The Role of Distribution/Retail in the Zero Waste System

Within the Zero Waste system, distribution centers work with manufacturers to reuse packaging such as pallets and crates and to reduce unnecessary packaging. Retailers convey consumer habits and preferences upstream to the manufacturers where consumer pressures can lead to better design. Retailers may also support downstream infrastructure such as Resource Recovery Parks through financial contributions or informational displays. Distributors and retailers serve as education centers to inform consumers about the proper disposal methods for items such as motor oil, electronics, and batteries. In all these ways, distributors expand upon their current roles by acting as a go-between for manufacturers and consumers in both directions.

The Empowered Consumer

The empowered consumer is essential in all facets of Zero Waste. First, the consumer uses their buying power to demand non-toxic and easily reused, recycled, or composted products. The consumer dollar is the ultimate voice to industry, particularly in the U.S., and will be the driving force in changing our consumption and disposal patterns. Reduce and reuse also begin with the consumerthey choose materials that are minimally packaged and less toxic, thus rewarding those manufacturers who take responsibility for their products and packaging, and providing the financial incentive for other companies to follow suit.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

EPR puts the legal, financial, and environmental responsibility for materials entering the waste stream with the manufacturer, not on the consumer or the local government at the end of the products or packagings life cycle. The end result is a fundamental shift in responsibility and financing so that manufacturers redesign products to reduce material consumption and facilitate reuse, recycling and recovery.

Investing in Recovery Infrastructure, Not Landfills

Rather than using the tax base to build new landfills or incinerators and then to clean up the resulting contamination, communities working towards Zero Waste invest in recycling, composting, and reuse facilities called Resource Recovery Parks. When the true costs of environmental pollution resulting from landfills or incinerators are accounted for, these cleaner Resource Recovery Parks attract the publics enthusiasm, pride and market investments.

Creating Jobs from Discards: The Job Potential of the Zero Waste System
Wasting materials in a landfill or incinerator also wastes jobs that could be created if those resources were preserved. According to the report Wasting and Recycling in the United States 2000, "On a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustains ten times more jobs than landfilling or incineration." In its report Resources up in Flames, the Institute of Local Self-Reliance discusses how remanufacturing offers the biggest pay-off in recycling. Recycling-based manufacturers create more jobs at higher wages than sorting operations. In fact, some recycling-based paper mills and plastics product manufacturers employ 60 times more workers on a per metric ton basis than do landfills. Rather than destroying the value of societys discards in incinerators and landfills, this value is protected and leveraged to create new local wealth.