Consider for a moment that humans are the only species on our planet that generate waste—not exactly a distinction conveying a higher order of thought! In a natural cycle, one creature’s cast-offs are another’s food resource. Our traditional and linear production methods force most waste to be considered garbage, which means that a significant amount of money and material is lost by this unnatural approach.
A zero is a perfect circle that stands for nothing—nature’s cycle is a perfect circle that stands for everything involved in the growing worldwide waste reduction effort known as the Zero Waste movement. Zero waste encourages us to look at waste as a resource instead of a disposable burden. Let’s wade our way through the movement’s philosophy, goals, standardization procedures, and what we can do to help out.
Zero Waste Future
The zero waste mentality presents a holistic approach to addressing what happens to our waste. From a zero waste point of view, waste is the physical result of poor product planning and inefficient packaging design, not to mention a huge loss of money. According to Zero Waste Alliance—the organization leading the charge for waste reduction efforts—waste needs to be eliminated entirely through better design, better manufacturing, and stricter adherence to the natural cycle.
This means that manufacturers will need to take a closer look at each step of a product’s development and consider its ultimate impact to ensure that processes mimic those of nature. Here are a few of the product development phases that require consideration:
- Design
- Assembly
- Packaging
- Advertisement
- Transportation
- Distribution
- Usage
- Ease of disassembly—how the products meets its end
This may seem like a lot to consider for every single product on the market, and a zero waste goal may seem idealistic in this respect. Consider that this movement is operating on the preventative level by treating symptoms of the waste factor, not just the tangible waste itself. This is accomplished by educating corporations and product designers and encouraging them to take responsibility for the environmental impact of their products and packaging—starting pre-design phase. A production process that incorporates this preventative planning is also known as cradle-to-cradle production, in which the end of one product’s usefulness is the beginning of its own reuse or the discovery of another use for it.
Of course, some of this responsibility rests with us as consumers. The choices that we make will set the level of demand for changes in design and technology that can improve the condition of our planet.
Zero Waste Target Areas
Zero waste does not simply address product design—its widest ramifications extend to promoting corporate accountability and economic sustainability for the betterment of society. The Grass Roots Recycling Network cites five key zero waste target areas: Redesigning Products and Packaging. This planning starts in the pre-design phase and takes into account the entire anticipated environmental impact associated with a product’s lifecycle.
Placing Responsibility on the Producer. Manufacturers are accountable for the impact created by their products and packaging, instead of placing that burden on the consumer. This appropriate shift in responsibility reduces the research and time that conscious consumers invest to determine the environmental implications of purchasing a given product.
Investing in Infrastructure, Not Landfills or Incinerators. The premise is that reducing waste proportionally reduces the need for hazardous, toxin emitting facilities. The tax dollars we now spend on landfills could then go toward replacement facilities, such as recycling centers.
Ending Taxpayer Subsidies for Wasteful and Polluting Industries. Tax subsidies make the extraction and processing of virgin resource materials quite a convenient affair—there are more monetary benefits to using virgin resources than there are for using alternative recycled or recovered options. In addition, the landfill and incinerator facilities that produce harmful emissions are not assigned hefty economic penalties so that disposal costs are kept low.
Creating Jobs and New Businesses from Discards. The zero waste approach also focuses on economic sustainability by encouraging a leveling out of resource distribution. From a business model perspective, landfill waste is wasted opportunity. According to a report published in 2000 by the Institute for Local Self Reliance, "On a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustains ten times more jobs than landfilling or incineration." The report cites that in some cases, recycling-based paper mills and recycled plastic product manufacturers employ 60 times more workers on a per-ton basis than landfills do. 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."
Standardizing Business-Related Zero Waste Efforts
Many companies are starting to realize the value of implementing zero waste methodologies and procedures. Some well-known corporations employ teams of specialists to advise them about all of the potential effects of a given product or alterations to an existing product. This is a savvy business move because production costs are drastically cut when products are designed for multi-faceted functionality without an excess of resources, in contrast to products that sit in a landfill after one brief turn of the lifecycle clock.
Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Kraft Foods, and Target are all members of a growing list of companies that the State of California officially recognizes for waste reduction and/or elimination efforts. Corporate waste reduction is simply smart—it can account for millions of corporate dollar savings. Visit the Zero Waste Network website for a listing of companies and their success stories in both national and global corporate waste reduction and recycling efforts. On a global level, the International Standards Organization (ISO) has developed ISO 14001, a set of standards targeted at assessing a business’s sustainability factor. The ISO 14001 standards do not focus on actual products, but on the production processes associated with a product and their cumulative environmental effects.
Once a company or government has incorporated zero waste methods into its business practices, economic cost comparisons between pre- and post-zero waste implementation become unnecessary because the results are clearly evident and wildly successful.
Sustainability Considerations
Performing a life cycle assessment (LCA)—also known as a life cycle analysis/inventory, ecobalance, and cradle-to-grave analysis—is the basic standard for setting and achieving zero waste goals. The LCA provides a quantification of the environmental impact of a given product or service throughout that product’s lifespan—including the energy consumed during resource extraction and transport. This provides an equitable standard for manufacturers to use in assessing the green quotient of each potential vendor they consider. As manufacturers increasingly seek to green their own businesses, the LCA process of inquiry is occurring at all levels of industry, from cleaning products to factory emissions.
Setting benchmark standards with policies such as ISO 14001 and LCA is very important because sometimes the potential impact of a product or alteration escapes everyone’s notice. Consider this example cited by a National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast about sustainable packaging: Ireland was looking to do a good service for the environment by placing a tax on those thin plastic bags that often end up in the trash or on the street. To accommodate this levy, many supermarkets replaced the thin plastic bags with paper bags or reusable bags made from thicker gauge. Certain stores noted that after the transition, they required triple the number of trucks to transport these heavier, thicker bags. Additionally, more plastic was imported into Ireland after the levy because consumers relied upon the thin bags to line certain receptacles, which then required custom-made plastic linings. Who could have known that this well-intentioned transition would require a greater energy investment than the original process—especially considering that the ultimate goal was to minimize energy consumption and waste!
Incidents such as the Ireland plastic bag levy inspire us to learn about the extent of consideration that needs to be given. Zero waste methodology is based upon ensuring that the energy put into making a change for the better does not offset or outweigh the change itself. Along those lines, a specific product may be strong in one suit—it may be biodegradable, for instance—but there could be other drawbacks that diminish its green factor. Zero waste encourages manufacturers and consumers alike to consider products on a contextual basis and assess the pros and cons of each situation.
Start Now
Since the zero waste, maximum-efficiency mentality doesn’t stop with product design, it can be applied wherever possible—our communities, businesses, industrial settings, schools, and homes. With zero waste, timeliness is a big factor—proponents attest that setting specific goals produces direct and timely results. Zero waste organizations therefore encourage efficiency-minded communities such as Oakland, California to set specific target dates for achieving their zero waste goals for solid waste, hazardous waste, emissions, and toxics.
This movement is planting the seeds of sustainability on a grassroots level to educate and encourage corporations to get creative and start designing products and packaging that can be reused and recycled. Of course, some of this responsibility rests with us as consumers. The choices that we make will set the level of demand for changes in design and technology that can improve the condition of our planet. Everyone can get involved in the zero waste movement to any extent, from corporate-scale production to single-item consumer choices. The benefits are green—for nature and our pockets. Green is the color of hope for our future.
Courtesy of Green Living Ideas