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 What
is Zero Waste?
"Zero waste is a philosophy and a
design principle for the 21st Century; it is not simply about putting an
end to landfilling. Aiming for zero waste is not an end-of-pipe
solution. That is why it heralds fundamental change. Aiming for zero
waste means designing products and packaging with reuse and recycling in
mind. It means ending subsidies for wasting. It means closing the gap
between landfill prices and their true costs. It means making
manufacturers take responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their
products and packaging. Zero waste efforts, just like recycling efforts
before, will change the face of solid waste management in the future.
Instead of managing wastes, we will manage resources and strive to
eliminate waste." - Institute for Local Self Reliance (Wash DC)
Recycling has become a national habit, a daily ritual practiced by over
100 million people every day. Yet recycling alone will not end our
dependency on landfills and incinerators, nor reverse the rapid
depletion of our natural resources. As world population and consumption
continue to rise, it is clear that our one-way system of extracting
virgin resources to make packaging and products that will later be
buried or burned is not sustainable.
Zero Waste is a new way of
looking at our waste stream. Instead of seeing used materials as garbage
in need of disposal, discards are seen as valuable resources. A pile of
"trash" represents jobs, financial opportunity, and raw material for new
products.
Other countries around the world and some U.S.
communities have begun to evaluate and redesign their current systems to
encourage resource recovery and to create a more materials-efficient
economy. American companies who do business overseas are already
redesigning their products and manufacturing processes to meet the Zero
Waste standards adopted by other countries. If they can do it there,
they can do it here. Redesigning Products and Packaging for Durability,
Reuse and Recyclability
Instead of perpetuating our throw-away
society, products would be designed using fewer material types that
could be easily reused or repaired when they have outlived their
usefulness. Creating Jobs from Discards
Wasting materials in a
landfill also wastes jobs that could be created if those resources were
preserved. According to the new, ground-breaking 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."1 According to the report, some
recycling-based paper mills and recycled plastic product manufacturers
employ 60 times more workers on a per-ton basis than do landfills. The
report adds, "Each recycling step a community takes locally means more
jobs, more business expenditures on supplies and services, and more
money circulating in the local economy through spending and tax
payments." Producer Responsibility
Zero Waste puts the
responsibility for materials entering the waste stream on the front-end
with the manufacturer, not on the consumer at the back-end of the
product's life. The end result is that manufacturers redesign products
to reduce material consumption and facilitate reuse, recycling and
recovery. "True Cost" Accounting
The price of a product does not
currently reflect the full costs of the environmental degradation and
public health impacts associated with the virgin resource extraction,
processing, manufacture, transportation, and disposal of that product.
When the market prices begin to include such costs, the more
environmentally-friendly product will also be the less expensive.
Investing in Infrastructure, Not Landfills
In many communities,
strategies like unit-based pricing for garbage collection (commonly
known as Pay-As-You-Throw) have created tremendous incentives for
residents and businesses to reduce waste and have resulted in higher
landfill diversion rates. Rather than using the tax base to build new
landfills or incinerators, communities have also invested in recycling,
composting, and reuse facilities. In some cases, communities have
created integrated discard "malls" where various recycling and reuse
businesses coexist in a location where consumers can come to drop-off
any unwanted item. Ending Tax Payer Subsidies for Wasteful and Polluting
Industries
Pollution, energy consumption and environmental
destruction start at the point of virgin resource extraction and
processing. Our tax dollars subsidize many industries that make products
from virgin materials, such as timber and mining. Zero Waste proposes
ending these federal subsidies to enable recycled and reused products to
compete on an even playing field. Without the subsidies, the market can
determine which are truly the less expensive products.
Download - Zero Waste PDf
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