Philosophy that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused
Zero waste, or "waste minimization", is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages redesigning resource life cycles so that all products are repurposed (i.e. "up-cycled") and/or reused. The goal of the movement is to avoid sending trash to landfills, incinerators, oceans, or any other part of the environment. Currently 9% of global plastic is recycled. In a zero waste system, all materials are reused until the optimum level of consumption is reached.
Zero waste refers to waste prevention as opposed to end-of-pipe waste management. It is a "whole systems" approach that aims for a massive change in the way materials flow through society, resulting in no waste. Zero waste encompasses more than eliminating waste through reducing, reusing, and recycling. It focuses on restructuring distribution and production systems to reduce waste. Zero waste provides guidelines for continually working towards eliminating waste.
According to the "Zero Waste International Alliance" (ZWIA), zero waste is the complete recovery of a product's resources "with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health."
Advocates expect that government regulation is needed to influence industrial choices over product and packaging design, manufacturing processes, and material selection.
Advocates say eliminating waste decreases pollution and can also reduce costs due to the reduced need for raw materials.
Cradle-to-Grave.
The cradle-to-grave is a linear material model that begins with resource extraction, moves to product manufacturing, and ends with a "grave" or landfill where the product is disposed of. Cradle-to-grave is in direct contrast to cradle-to-cradle materials or products, which are recycled into new products at the end of their lives so that ultimately there is no waste.
Cradle-to-cradle focuses on designing industrial systems so that materials flow in closed-loop cycles, which means that waste is minimized and waste products can be recycled and reused. Cradle-to-cradle goes beyond dealing with waste issues after it has been created by addressing problems at the source and redefining problems by focusing on design. The cradle-to-cradle model is sustainable and considerate of life and future generations.
The cradle-to-cradle framework has evolved steadily from theory to practice. In the industrial sector, it is creating a new notion of materials and material flows. Just as in the natural world, in which one organism's "waste" cycles through an ecosystem to provide nourishment for other living things, cradle-to-cradle materials circulate in closed-loop cycles, providing nutrients for nature or industry.
The spread of industrialization worldwide has been accompanied by a large increase in waste production. In 2012 the World Bank stated that 1.3 billion tons of municipal waste was produced by urban populations and estimates that the number will reach 2.2 billion tons by 2025 (Global Solid Waste Management Market - Analysis and Forecast). The increase in solid waste production increases the need for landfills. With the increase in urbanization, these landfills are being placed closer to communities. These landfills are disproportionately located in areas of low socioeconomic status with primarily non-white populations. Findings indicated these areas are often targeted as waste sites because permits are more easily acquired and there was generally less community resistance. Additionally, within the last five years, more than 400 hazardous waste facilities have received formal enforcement actions for unspecified violations that were considered to be a risk to human health.
There is a growing global population that is faced with limited resources from the environment.[7] To relieve the pressures placed on the finite resources available it has become more important to prevent waste. To achieve zero waste, waste management has to move from a linear system to be more cyclical so that materials, products, and substances are used as efficiently as possible. Materials must be chosen so that they may either return safely to a cycle within the environment or remain viable in the industrial cycle.[8]
Zero waste promotes not only reuse and recycling but, more importantly, it promotes prevention and product designs that consider the entire product life cycle.[8] Zero-waste designs strive for reduced material use, use of recycled materials, use of more benign materials, longer product lives, repair ability, and ease of disassembly at end of life.[3] Zero waste strongly supports sustainability by protecting the environment, reducing costs and producing additional jobs in the management and handling of wastes back into the industrial cycle.[8] A Zero waste strategy may be applied to businesses, communities, industrial sectors, schools, and homes.
Benefits proposed by advocates include:
Health.
A major issue with landfills is hydrogen sulfide, which is released from the natural decay of waste. Studies have shown a positive association between increased lung cancer mortality rates and increased morbidity and mortality related to respiratory disease and hydrogen sulfide exposure. These studies also showed that the hydrogen sulfide exposure increased with proximity to the landfill.
Household chemicals and prescription drugs are increasingly being found in large quantities in the leachate from landfills. This is causing concern about the ability of landfills to contain these materials and the possibility of these chemicals and drugs making their way into the groundwater and the surrounding environment.
Zero waste promotes a circular material flow that allows materials to be used over and over, reducing the need for landfill space. Through zero waste the number of toxins released into the air and water would be decreased and products examined to determine what chemicals are used in the production process.
Health issues related to landfills:
Zero waste promotion of a cyclical product life can help reduce the need to create and fill landfills. This can help reduce incidents of respiratory diseases and birth defects that are associated with the toxins released from landfills. Zero waste can also help preserve local environments and potable water sources by preventing pollutants from entering the ecosystem.
History.
The California Integrated Waste Management Board established a zero waste goal in 2001. The City and County of San Francisco's Department of the Environment established a goal of zero waste in 2002, which led to the City's Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance in 2009.
A group that would become the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA) held its first meeting in 2002, chaired by British economist and environmentalist Robin Murray.
In 2008, Zero Waste was a term used to describe manufacturing and municipal waste management practices. Bea Johnson, a French American woman living in California, decided to apply it to her 4-person household. In 2009, she started the blog "Zero Waste Home", and in 2010, was featured in "The New York Times".
The International Day of Zero Waste was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 14, 2022. The event has been held annually on March 30 since 2023. "During International Day of Zero Waste, Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, civil society, the private sector, academia, youth and other stakeholders are invited to engage in activities aimed at raising awareness of national, subnational, regional and local zero-waste initiatives and their contribution to achieving sustainable development. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) jointly facilitate the observance of International Day of Zero Waste."
Packaging Examples.
Milk can be shipped in many forms. One of the traditional forms was reusable returnable glass milk bottles, often home delivered by a milkman. While some of this continues, other options have recently been more common: one-way gable-top paperboard cartons, one-way aseptic cartons, one-way recyclable glass bottles, one-way milk bags, and others. Each system claims some advantages and also has possible disadvantages. From the zero-waste standpoint, the reuse of bottles is beneficial because the material usage per trip can be less than other systems. The primary input (or resource) is silica-sand, which is formed into glass and then into a bottle. The bottle is filled with milk and distributed to the consumer. A reverse logistics system returns the bottles for cleaning, inspection, sanitization, and reuse. Eventually, the heavy-duty bottle would not be suited for further use and would be recycled. Waste and landfill usage would be minimized. The material waste is primarily the wash water, detergent, transportation, heat, bottle caps, etc. While true zero waste is never achieved, a life cycle assessment can be used to calculate the waste at each phase of each cycle.
Online shopping orders are often placed in an outer box to contain multiple items for easier transport and tracking. This creates waste for every order, especially when there is only a single item. In response, some products are now designed not to require an outer box for safe shipping, a feature known as ships in own container.
Recycling.
It is important to distinguish recycling from Zero Waste. The most common practice of recycling is simply that of placing bottles, cans, paper, and packaging into curbside recycling bins. The modern version of recycling is more complicated and involves many more elements of financing and government support. For example, a 2007 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that the US recycles at a national rate of 33.5% and includes in this figure composted materials. In addition, many multinational commodity companies have been created to handle recycled materials. At the same time, claims of recycling rates have sometimes been exaggerated, for example by the inclusion of soil and organic matter used to cover garbage dumps daily, in the "recycled" column. In US states with recycling incentives, there is constant local pressure to inflate recycling statistics.
Recycling has been separated from the concept of zero waste. One example of this is the computer industry where worldwide millions of PC's are disposed of as electronic waste each year in 2016 44.7 million metric tons of electronic waste was generated of which only 20% was documented and recycled. Some computer manufacturers refurbish leased computers for resale. Community Organizations have also entered this space by refurbishing old computers from donation campaigns for distribution to undeserved communities.
Software recycling.
A clear example of the difference between zero waste and recycling is discussed in "Getting to Zero Waste", in the software industry. Zero waste design can be applied to intellectual property where the effort to code functionality into software objects is developed by design as opposed to copying code snippets multiple times when needed. The application of zero waste is straightforward as it conserves human effort. Also, software storage mediums have transitioned from consumable diskettes to internal drives which are vastly superior and have a minimal cost per megabyte of storage. This is a physical example where zero waste correctly identifies and avoids wasteful behavior.
Use of zero waste system.
Zero waste is poorly supported by the enactment of government laws to enforce the waste hierarchy.
A special feature of zero waste as a design principle is that it can be applied to any product or process, in any situation or at any level. Thus it applies equally to toxic chemicals as to benign plant matter. It applies to the waste of atmospheric purity by coal-burning or the waste of radioactive resources by attempting to designate the excesses of nuclear power plants as "nuclear waste". All processes can be designed to minimize the need for discard, both in their own operations and in the usage or consumption patterns which the design of their products leads to. Recycling, on the other hand, deals only with simple materials.
Zero waste can even be applied to the waste of human potential by enforced poverty and the denial of educational opportunity. It encompasses redesign for reduced energy wasting in industry or transportation and the wasting of the earth's rainforests. It is a general principle of designing for the efficient use of all resources, however defined.
The recycling movement may be slowly branching out from its solid waste management base to include issues that are similar to the community sustainability movement.
Zero waste, on the other hand, is not based in waste management limitations to begin with but requires that we maximize our existing reuse efforts while creating and applying new methods that minimize and eliminate destructive methods like incineration and recycling. Zero waste strives to ensure that products are designed to be repaired, refurbished, re-manufactured and generally reused.
Significance of dump capacity.
Many dumps are currently exceeding carrying capacity. This is often used as a justification for moving to Zero Waste. Others counter by pointing out that there are huge tracts of land available throughout the US and other countries which could be used for dumps. Proposals abound to destroy all garbage as a way to solve the garbage problem. These proposals typically claim