Finger Lakes Group
Winter 2007 Newsletter
Zero Waste?!
by Paul Connett
Zero Waste differs from the traditional "recycling" alternative offered by citizens who fought both landfills and incinerators. This earlier use of the term "recycling" implied that the community had "total" responsibility for solving the local waste issue. Zero Waste does not. It makes clear that the community cannot take care of the total waste stream. In short, zero waste requires a combination of both industrial and community responsibility. Zero Waste shifts the pre-occupation from waste disposal at the back-end to better resource management and better industrial design at the front-end. The simple message to industry: if we can't reuse it, recycle it, or compost it: you shouldn't be making it!
We need better industrial design for the 21st century where the imperative is clear: the move towards a sustainable society. After ending senseless wars this remains the biggest challenge for this and future generations. We have everything except sustainability. Right now we are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to. You simply can't run a throwaway society on a finite planet. While landfills bury the evidence and incinerators burn the evidence, we have yet to face the real problem.
Industrial responsibility requires three key developments: 1) design for sustainability, 2) clean production (avoid the toxics which cause such a headache at the back end), and 3) extended producer responsibility (EPR). EPR says that industry has cradle-to-grave responsibility for its products and packaging. When industry makes something, they must expect to get it back after the consumer has finished using it - whether it is a beer bottle or a copying machine.
Community responsibility begins with source separation. The simplest is a three way split: one container for the compostables, one container (or more) for the recyclables and one container for the residuals. This is the system adopted by San Francisco and they have already achieved a 63% diversion from landfill with a goal of 75% by 2010.
This simple collection system needs to be buttressed with reuse and repair and job training centers. An excellent example is Recycle North in Burlington, Vermont. These operations create a lot of jobs - especially in the inner city. Other excellent examples of reuse and repair centers are Urban Ore in Berkeley (grosses nearly $3 million a year); Ecocycle in Boulder, Colorado; Eureka Recycling in St. Paul, Minnesota; and Waste Wise in Georgetown, Ontario, Canada.
Dovetailing into the reuse and repair centers is the job-creating business of deconstruction, as opposed to demolition, of old buildings.
On top of this there are many examples of local and business waste reduction initiatives, which include supermarkets offering dispensing machines to refill bottles with materials such as shampoo, detergent, wine, water, and milk. Other initiatives include the banning of plastic shopping bags and the Irish government's imposition of a 15 cents tax on such unnecessary items. This simple move in Ireland reduced the use of these bags by over 90% in one year and put over 12 million euros into their recycling budget.
Which brings us to the thorny issue of what to do with the residuals. I define the residuals as either poor industrial design or poor purchasing decisions. Incineration makes these residuals disappear in smoke and nanoparticles. Zero Waste sets out to make them very visible
I have recommended a modification of the existing residual screening systems built up front of Nova Scotia's landfills (which set out to stabilize the dirty organic fraction before landfill) to include a research component. A local university would ideally man this research center. The task would be to examine the residuals and offer 1) recommendations for a better capture rate of the reusables, recyclables and clean compostables; 2) suggest possible local uses for some for these materials; 3) recommend to industry better design for these products so that they don't end up in these facilities; and 4) research ways to avoid toxics in manufacture. Overarching all of this is the need to link Zero Waste with other developments needed to move towards sustainability: sustainable organic agriculture, green architecture, community development, sustainable economic development, sustainable energy, sustainable industrial design, and employment. With respect to the latter it is exciting to see the labor movement's engagement in Zero Waste. They have seen where the jobs are.
The exciting thing about Zero Waste is that it links every human being with the concept of sustainability. This is practical stuff, not rhetoric. Waste is far too important to be left to waste experts. Waste is the visible evidence that we are doing something wrong. Nature makes no waste - it is a human invention. We all have a role to play in designing a society which makes no waste.
Zero Waste (like sustainability) is an idealistic goal but Zero Waste 2020 puts that goal into a realistic time frame. We might not get to zero by 2020, but by aiming for zero we could get darn close.