Welcome to the site of Ranking and Repair!

I decided to write a non-fiction book with the title and subtitle RANKING – The reality, illusion and manipulation of objectivity.  The book discusses the Hows and Whys of our love and fear of making ranks and being ranked through many real life examples to be viewed from three different angles (reality, illusion and manipulation) of objectivity. Ranking converts scientific theories to everyday’s experience by raising and answering such question as:

  • Are college ranking lists objective?
  • How to rank and rate states based on their fragility, corruption or even happiness?
  • How to find the most relevant web pages?
  • How to rank employees?

Life and society is really complex, consequently our message is not so simple such as ”Ranking is good!” or ”Ranking is bad!”. Since we permanently rank ourselves and others and are also being ranked, the message is twofold: how to prepare the possible most objective ranking and how to accept that ranking does  not necessarily reflects our real values and achievements. The reader will understand our difficulties to navigate between objective and subjective and gets help to identify and modify her place in real and virtual communities by combining our human intelligence with computational techniques.

How to Repair our Resource Management Strategies

While we are working on this book, we see resources everywhere, from our phones and laptops to our families and colleagues (whom we saw quite infrequently in the last two years) to neighbors and global communities. Resources might exist in mutual relationships. Publishing houses are resources for aspiring authors, for example, but authors are also a resource. If authors would not sign contracts with them, publishing houses could not survive.

There are at least three types of resources. \emph{Private goods} are those whose ownership is restricted to an individual or a group who has already purchased the good. Your cell phone, a movie ticket you bought (well, before and after a pandemic), and a package of sausage (preferentially \emph{chorizo picante} you bought, maybe too often during the pandemic) are examples. Economists like to use the terms rivalrous'' and excludable,” for situations in which the availability of private goods is finite. The size of a cinema-hall is visibly finite, so access to the resource is excludable based on the purchase of a ticket. If you managed to buy all the tickets, you are the only user. Others, your rivals, can’t use it \citep{privategood}.

Public goods are non-rivalrous and non-excludable and available for each member of society. By society, we mean they are available to the population of a single country, since public goods are determined by national policies and a national budget. Law enforcement and national defense are certainly public goods in each country. Since there is no free lunch, the expenses of the public goods are covered by taxes. National policies decide whether healthcare and public education are public goods. The decisions are far from trivial, and there is a recurring question: Should we or shouldn’t we?

Arguments for government spending on public goods state that it is very beneficial for the whole society since a healthy and well-educated workforce will build a better country. Criticism is based on the argument that taxpayers pay for services they do not necessarily use, and the private sector is more efficient \citep{pubgood}.

Common-pool resources are a commodity that, in some sense, are located between a public and private good. A common-pool resource is rivalrous but non-excludable. In principle, it is available to everybody, but its supply is very finite. Fishes in the oceans are typical common-pool resources. Such goods can be overused and over-exploited. While a fisherman—who is not an owner of the resource—knows that more fishing may imply the extinction of fishes, he does not have any incentive to moderate his fishing. If he decides to leave more fish in the ocean today, he will not have more tomorrow, since other fishermen will catch more today. African elephants have also been common-pool resources and are overhunted \citep{jung17}.

The tragedy of elephants is a special case of the tragedy of the commons, a concept popularized by the biologist Garrett Hardin ($1915-2003$) \citep{hardin68}. His paper elaborated on the growing concerns about human overpopulation, but its illustrative example came from English sheep-grazing land. The problem is that each agent would act in his or her own (short-term!) self-interest and consume as much of the commonly accessible, scarce resource as possible. In the longer term, the resource would disappear, leading to tragedy.

Club goods are excludable but non-rivalrous (or at least not until they reach a point where saturation occurs). A private park is a textbook example.

For the continuation .. now you can pre-order the book. https://www.amazon.com/REPAIR-Improve-Objects-Ourselves-Society/dp/3030989070/ref=sr_1_1?crid=76NTRZZ8JCN5&keywords=repair+erdi&qid=1646008764&s=books&sprefix=%2Cstripbooks%2C78&sr=1-1

Action: Transition to circular economy

Circular economy, and circular technologies are not a magic bullet, but they can help. To make large-scale transition from linear to circular technologies we need Technology and Good Moral.

The traditional linear extract->produce->use->dump material and energy flow model of the modern economic system is unsustainable. Circular economy emphasizes the reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair, cascading and upgrading of components, materials and even products. It also considers the utilization of solar, wind, biomass

and waste-derived energy. Ecological economics recognises that environment has both local to global limits. Ecological economists consider global issues such as carbon emissions, deforestation, overfishing and species extinctions. They also realize the conflict between short-term policy and long-term visions of sustainable societies \citep{korhonen18,nelson-coffey19}.

Linear technologies convert crude materials A to product P and waste substances B. In an ideal circular world, B should be converted to A to establish closed loop technologies.

We should turn now to review some examples of the circular solutions \citep{innovate}.

The significant step in each of these technologies to close the loop.

Clothing: from textile to fibers

As it was discussed in \ref{ssec:fastfashion}, the very linear model of the fast fashion industry persuades consumers to buy the latest styles. People living in the throw-away society don’t see any problem to dispose clothing bought a year ago, or so. Used clothes sent to landfill or burnt with the velocity as we do now certainly would be a significant component of a climate catastrophe. According to the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association 95\% of textiles can be recycled, but 85\% ends up in landfills.

What are the options to avoid this scenario? We need Technology and Good Moral. While buying and selling clothes at the second-hand market reduces waste, but most likely it will be a main stream business model. There are now more textile recycling programs, maybe in your town, too, to materialize good moral.

As concerns technology, here is an encouraging example: the Spanish company $Recover^{TM}$ transform textile waste into low-impact, high-quality recycled cotton fiber. You can learn about the closed-loop technology from the video \citep{recover}.

From human waste to animal feed

Waste from humans and animals is still an everyday problem in lesser economically developed countries. Due to the lack of appropriate sewerage systems waste can reach rivers and lakes and leads to contaminated drinking water, which is an obvious source of serious diseases.

A lack of proper sewerage networks in ever expanding cities means waste can end up in rivers and streams and can end up contaminating drinking water leading to the spread of life threatening disease. It is not always simple to install well-operating sewer systems, since often it need a large amount of energy. A question emerged whether biology can offer some efficient solution? ”Black Soldier Flies Are The New Superstars Of Sustainable Aquaculture” reported Forbes in 2019 \citep{simka19}. The single most important fact about Black Soldier Flies (BSF) may be that in the larvae stage, they have the very efficient ability to transform that waste into high-quality protein. ow thy are used as protein additives in animal feed. Technology based on this recognition establishes an inexpensive, clean and sustainable food source. It is too early yo see whether the procedure can be scaled up, and will be eligible to approve by governmental agencies.

From paper industry waste to biodegradable plastics

Lignin is a very useful organic polymer molecule that forms the cell walls in trees and plants.

It is also a waste material of chemical pulping processes during the paper production, and a significant component of biomass. The conversion of wood chips to pulp for manufacturing paper generates huge quantities of lignin.

The good news is that lignin seems to be a substitute of petroleum-based plastics. It is not a useless byproduct, but a starting material to a closed loop technology. Together with its derivatives lignin can been converted into such recyclable products as bottles, shopping bags, straws, foams etc.

While the potential of lignin is known for decades, but the road to extended applications is not smooth. There are some problems to identify its structure, and there ongoing research to help the lignin-based technologies \citep{stumpf20}

From Plastics to Roads

Toby McCartney, the CEO of the British company MacRebur has the mission ”to help solve two world problems; to help solve the waste plastic epidemic, and to enhance the asphalt used to make our road surfaces around the world.”\citep{macreb, macrebur}. They adopted a technology to process waste plastics into asphalt for road construction. There is a secret element in the process, they use a ”specially designed activator” in addition to the waste plastic.

From plastic bottles to bricks

Material scientists elaborated the technology of converting plastic bottles to brick \citep{chauhan19} by identifying a set of potential additive materials, which imply the improved compressive strength of the bricks. Different versions of the technology are now adopted in a number of countries. For example, Gjenge Makers, a factory in Nairobi, Kenya, takes plastic waste and turns it into a brick that is five to seven times stronger than concrete.

The process was developed by Nzambi Matee, who used her engineering skills to develop the process that involved mixing plastic waste with sand. The cleaned and dried bottles are cut into pieces. The plastic is melted in a drum and sand is mixed with it form the bricks. \citep{nairobi}

The Ecobricking movement has emerged from a growing awareness of the scale of plastic pollution,

and appeared in many countries including the Philippines, India and South Africa, just to mention a few of them.

Utilizing the sharing economy

Sharing economy is related to circular economy, since both models’ goal is to reduce waste in society. Sharing economy looks a mean to improve our moral, accepting that we should not necessarily need to own things. We see that sharing economy business models are rapidly rising worldwide, and could consider them as seeds to the cultural changes mentioned in \ref{ssec:cultchange}. The basic idea is that every resource which is not utilized efficiently is waste. Cars are parked 95\% of the time \citep{morris16}, so they waste their manufacturing energy.

The throw-away society uses the model based on private propriety and a consumerist view of society. In the repair society Sharing Platforms are used extensively. In the Sharing Platform business is the company does not make or own any goods to share, just it provides a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform to connect people and unused products or services.

The transactions in the P2P networks happen through a digital platform that somehow regulates the bargaining between the parties.

Some examples of sharing platforms

– Ridesharing or carsharing: so you don’t need a car, and still can not rely on public transit

– Coworking: as now many people works in isolation, in home office, or in Starbucks shops, a great alternative is to share infrastructures, expenses. Also, it provides some community. My (P) son, Gábor, an individual contractor, uses almost daily the Kubik coworking space at the foot of the Margaret Bridge in Pest, just likes it very much.

– Couchsurfing and/or Airbnb: they are sharing alternatives to hotels. Couchsurfing was free for about fourteen years. It provided less privacy, but as a compensation if you were alone in a foreign city, you had people to talk to. Airbnb became a success story since simply it’s cheaper than staying at a hotel.

– Peer-to-peer lending: is an alternative method of financing. People are able to obtain loans directly from other individuals, without the participation of financial institutions. It is not clear whether or not it will be popular and the advantages will exceed the disadvantages..

”Goods and services access promoted by sharing business models are emerging in the place of older model based on private propriety and a consumerist view of society. This is strongly connected with circular economy strategies, particularly referred to waste prevention, reduction and resources valorisation” } \citep{sposato17}

Food waste versus hunger

A number of my (P) Facebook friends (well, and myself too) like to share idyllic pictures of food consumed in the company of our loved ones. Many of us have some superficial interest in the origin and means of processing the food we consume. We like to see “cage-free” labels or know that the products are local. Still, in the United States, about ten percent of products come from the farmer’s market, and ninety percent come from outside of local communities \citep{fast}. About half of the consumable food in the United States is thrown away, and wasted food is the single largest component of American landfills. The flip side of the coin is that one in seven Americans experience hunger, and during the coronavirus pandemic, that number became one on six (so more than fifty million Americans lack food security in 2020). Brenda Ann Kenneally \citep{brenda20}, a photojournalist documented by the food insecure lives of millions in several moving and difficult-to forget photos.

It is easy to waste, isn’t it? It would be difficult to deny that a typical source of food waste is “overbuying.” Not just because we forget about our home reserves but also because we simply misjudge our needs—we get more than we need or have run out of. Or we just change our minds as picky people: What we liked in the store and put in our shopping basket no longer appeals to us at home, and we throw it out.

We waste in a variety of ways: We often buy food when there is still enough in the fridge because we just forgot about it. For example, we might not know that we have it because we store it irregularly. There are a lot of packages lurking on top of each other in our pantries, so a warranty date can easily escape attention. A lot of recently expired food in unopened packaging lands in the trash every day. Everyone is afraid of salmonella and its immediate consequences, but the long-term consequences of food waste are more difficult to see. But irregular, less-than-thorough cleaning of the refrigerator can also ruin food prematurely.

Recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a “Clean Plate” campaign against food waste \citep{bbc20}. Statistics suggest that at least 17 million tons of food went to waste in China annually in the last several years \citep{marchisio20}. We have yet to see the results of the Chinese attempt, which aims to establish a social environment where waste is shameful. More precisely, waste is not only shameful, but the lack of appropriate recycling of food waste is also penalized by the newly introduced social credit rating system.

In India, 25% of the freshwater used to produce food is ultimately wasted, even as millions of people still lack access to drinking water. Big weddings and huge parties are big contributors to Indian food wastage. There is a chronic imbalance of food distribution.

Why, why, and why? If individually we have a bad conscience about behaving this way, why do we have huge quantities of food waste in very different parts of the world? First of all, whatever we say after paying in the supermarket, food is still cheap. Second, we don’t buy “ugly” foods. We often only like to buy produce that has aesthetic quality. Manicured food is identified with high-standard technology and food safety. As we are able to make excellent pictures with our cell phones, the so-called “camera cuisine” influences what we order to eat. There is a new profession, food stylist, who prepares photogenic food for photography, video, or film. We, shoppers, don’t really buy imperfect-looking fruits and vegetables. On the other side, crooked produces are not even located by grocers on the shelves—they are thrown out before they make it to the store. This is unreasonable since biologically, the flavor of the food is more important than appearance. But data show that waste and hunger were rising on parallel tracks. It is not painless to accept this contradiction.

Once again: fresh goods are beautiful, less fresh—withered, browned—are ugly. ”We eat with our eyes”. The color and fragrance (turbocharged with state-of-the-art technology during production), the texture, the shape, and the packaging of the product all affect our most important senses: Our eyes. It is estimated that we get eighty percent of the information from the outside world with our eyes, so there is a stake in the competition to be beautiful. A lot of goods are finished works of art: Artists, scientists design every detail, even the overall effect. In countless cases, we throw the unsightly in the trash: “It may still be good, but I won’t eat it anymore.”

While it is easy to write that our culinary culture should be subject to rethinking and repair, some elementary steps have been made for a long time. Probably people back to antiquity felt some moral obligation to help hungry individuals eat. The soup kitchen, as an institution, emerged at the end of the 18th century. While the industrial revolution created an increase in overall prosperity, it also exacerbated inequality. The traditional life of many poor people was disrupted, and the number of hungry people increased. Sir Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, is credited as an early champion of hunger relief and established the first modern soup kitchen. The concept became extensive in the United States during the Great Depression. The infamous gangster labeled “Public Enemy Number One,” Al Capone, opened a soup kitchen that “served breakfast, lunch, and dinner to an average of 2,200 Chicagoans every day”\citep{klein19}.

Modern food banks are non-profit organizations and are instrumental in helping those people who cannot afford to purchase sufficient food. The modern era of food banks started in 1967, when St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance was founded in Phoenix, Arizona, by John van Hengel, who later founded the organization Feeding America to popularize the concept of food banks throughout the whole country and actually the world. At that time, both politicians and the media drew attention to the issue of hunger and led to the introduction of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), generally referred to as the food stamp program. Food insecurity soared during the pandemic, and as food banks rely on personal donations, these contributions shrink during difficult times.

There are now companies like Imperfect Foods and Misfit Market, which purchase and deliver cosmetically challenged produce to consumers. I (P) clicked on the website of Imperfect Foods after their ad appeared on my Facebook page, and soon we became enthusiastic Imperfectionists. We discussed the food waste problem over dinner in my house (Hungarian goulash was served and consumed) with our neighbor, a professor of sociology/anthropology. She feels that while Imperfect Food is an appealing initiative, it may create competition with food banks, which have previously been able to acquire imperfect foods and provide them to those who need it.

Traditional housewives have always been creative in secondary processing. Potato soup (the Central European version is different from what we have in the United States or Japan) and leftovers can be potato souffle, and tomato salad could be converted into bruschetta or gazpacho. We can transform and improve leftovers to make our diet varied, and most importantly, so as not to throw away so many residues. It is also recycling, although not industrial, but individual and more creative. Last but not least, it is a real innovative opportunity for ourselves.

The title of a tale by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen is “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf.” In this story, the little woman throws the loaf she is supposed to give to her poor family on the ground in front of her to step on it to keep her slippers clean from the mud. Today, entire streets could be “paved” with bites thrown in the trash for various reasons. And not only with bread, but also with cold cuts, cheeses, packaged sauces, and other delicacies. We are becoming less consistent about buying and storing food, and the issue of recycling is hardly yet to come.

Throwing away food goes far beyond the specific loss of food or money. It involves wasted animal feed, the spraying of plants, the cost of fuel and energy for production and transport, and the cost of storage, all of which add up to tangible losses for the consumer. Few are aware of this, as then we would have to face the hard-to-digest fact that we regularly harm ourselves. Over-consumption and overproduction can eventually become a trap for each other: Could it have become our subconscious need to throw out a personalized dose? That would be the abundance—does that make us feel wealthy or gourmet?

We arrived at a transition: A few years ago, there was still a common phrase in the recipe sections of magazines: Just eat and cook completely intact fruits and vegetables! cooking! Today, due to the impact of what might be called bio-lifestyle, we read this less often, and the “ecological approach” also overwrites the old advice. We can boldly cut a little bump out of the otherwise flawless pieces instead of throwing it all in the trash. One little strategic suggestion from Zsuzsa: Next time buy a smaller fridge! Less food will be ruined because you will have less space!

Environmentalists, business owners, and information technologists implement new methods of fighting against food waste. Some restaurants, as Rhodora in Brooklyn operates, are based on a no-waste moral principle. Here are a number of applications worldwide aimed at reducing food waste \citep{roy19}: \emph{Karma} helps us to discover the cheaper offer of restaurants and bars near us at the end of the day. Farmdrop connects with local farmers so our footprint for buying and consuming will be smaller. With Olio’s support, we can find partners nearby to whom we can hand over our leftovers. Foodcloud is a partner of supermarkets: Unsold food reaches charity organizations and those in need. \emph{Giki} shows how ethical the distributor is and how sustainable it is to operate.

Michelin recently introduced a new distinction, the Green Star, to award restaurants that prove to be successful at reducing waste, preserving natural resources, and protecting endangered species. Thirteen Japanese restaurants have been awarded \citep{michelin21} in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Osaka. (It is interesting that in Tokyo mostly French restaurants have received the award, while in Kyoto, traditional Japanese ones have been granted.)

We have now more and more opportunities to improve the process of waste reduction. Every little step might imply significant change, every gram of food that is not thrown away leads to an increase in our own financial situation and sustainability. If we step on this path and start paying attention to the shelves of the fridge, the warranty on the packaging, the contents of the pantry, we can experience a remarkable transformation in just a few weeks or maybe even in a few days. Our first feeling might be that we are sorry to throw away the cake that has not yet been eaten, but we leave in the evening, so we look for someone among the neighbors to whom we can offer the leftovers. The second feeling is creativity: Yes, the apple is no longer as tight and red as it was when we bought it five days ago, but next to the meat, the steamed apple will be perfect.

As we worked on this chapter, we were happy to see that “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

We, the society, are in the process of rethinking the whole food system we have. How we produce, distribute and consume food. The stakes are our own health, the environment, the climate and, and a healthier (both in physical and social sense) society.