Here's a perspective on Zero Waste from Guy Crittenden, editor of Solid
Waste and Recycling Magazine and HazMat Magazine, Canada:
Ten Points on
“Zero Waste”
by Guy Crittenden, 22 July
2008
****http://blogsw.solidwastemag.com/2008/07/ten_points_on_zero_waste.html
*
*Some
recent correspondence with members of the new Ontario Zero Waste
Coalition
caused me to write up an explanation of Zero Waste, as I
understand the
term. My motivation was both to clarify the term and
further differentiate
it from other concepts that, while they may work
in concert with Zero Waste
(at present), are quite different. The main
one is “waste diversion” -- a
catchall phrase for activities like
municipal recycling and composting that
may be worthwhile for some
applications, but that are not the same as Zero
Waste and might, in some
instances, work against the goals of the Zero Waste
movement.
I offer an edited version below for the benefit of interested
parties.
The items are not listed in order of importance.
1. The Zero
Waste movement is concerned with moving beyond “waste
disposal” and even
“waste diversion” toward a society that views waste
as poor design. The idea
is to design waste out of products and
packaging completely.
2.
Ideally, municipalities could eventually only collect and process
organic
materials (kitchen scraps and yard trimmings); “product waste”
(all the
byproducts of the consumer society) will be managed in
manufacturer
networks, reverse distribution systems and, in some cases,
municipalities
collecting material under contract from private
businesses. Industry will
pay for the reuse and recycling of its
byproducts, as well as anything that
needs final disposal, which should
be as close to zero as
possible.
3. “Waste diversion” (recycling, etc.) is only an interim step
along the
path to true Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) wherein
businesses
will assume “cradle to cradle” responsibility for their products,
and
not externalize certain lifecycle costs onto the environment or
taxpayers (which provide a kind of subsidy by absorbing industry’s
effluvia or carting it off). When they have to pay for the end-of-life
management of their products, businesses have a financial incentive to
become “eco-efficient.”
4. The Zero Waste movement opposes “product
stewardship” programs that
look superficially like EPR but are in fact
nothing of the kind. In some
product stewardship programs an industry
funding organization (IFO) is
established that charges an advance recycling
fee to collect and manage
waste materials. Even if this offers the positive
aspect of keeping the
materials out of landfill, there’s often no incentive
for producers to
change “business as usual” (i.e., redesign products for
reuse and
recycling). For consumers, the “eco fee” becomes analogous to a
green
tax that they have no choice but to pay, with only a vague idea that
some good will come from the program. In the worst instances, the
advance recycling fee rewards “free riders” that foist poorly designed
products (from an ecological standpoint) on the market, yet get to wear
the same green “fig leaf” as companies that are more eco-efficient. The
eco-fee may even discourage companies from doing more to improve their
environmental performance at each stage, because the stewardship program
has simply made the environmental image problem “go away.” Consumers
feel the problem has been dealt with and consume in the usual way,
“guilt free.” Instead, true Extended Producer Responsibility is what is
sought.
5. Nothing in the Zero Waste philosophy is meant to question
the good
intentions, sincerity and professionalism of municipal waste
managers.
They generally perform an excellent job doing what society asks of
them.
Instead, what Zero Waste proponents are doing is changing what is
being
asked of these professionals. Where society and its elected
representatives used to ask, “How can we safely dispose of this waste?”
or (more recently) “How can we divert more of this material from
disposal (e.g., landfill, incineration)?” the new questions are along
the lines of, “What would a truly sustainable society look like?” The
answer to that question may include municipalities not handling many
waste materials at all. Local governments have, in a sense, become
“enablers” of the throwaway society.
6. Even if we could design the
perfect landfill that never leaks or the
perfect emissions-free
waste-to-energy incinerator, Zero Waste advocates
would still view that
negatively because the very last thing they want
is make it even easier to
consume and dispose of goods (“guilt free”).
Something that’s often lost in
the simplistic public conversation over
waste diversion versus disposal is
that the biggest part of the
environmental footprint occurs not at a
product’s disposal or recycling
stage, but “upstream” during the stages of
natural resource extraction,
manufacturing, transportation and distrubution,
and during the useful
life of the product. We’re facing a broader
sustainability challenge,
not a mere “disposal problem,” the Zero Waste
advocates might say.
7. Everyone agrees that waste management
infrastructure -- if it’s to be
built at all -- should be constructed and
operated to a high standard
and comply with environmental regulations. Waste
management
professionals constantly try to deflect public skepticism about
new
waste transfer, processing or disposal systems with promises that
everything will be done properly, and that there won’t be toxic
emissions or odors or leaks. However, in place of better disposal
infrastructure, Zero Waste promotes what some people call “industrial
ecology” -- a materials and energy flow system that is harmonious with,
and reflective of, natural systems, where waste is either not produced
at all, or is the raw material for another product. Nothing goes to
waste in nature. While government has a role as regulator and overseer,
this outcome is just too important to entrust to government alone. The
power of a subsidy-free marketplace can be harnessed to achieve
sustainability faster and for the very long term. A Zero Waste system
would include changes in the way products are made, used and delivered
to the marketplace. Eco parks would spring up to efficiently share
resources, including raw or recycled materials and electricity or
steam.
8. Any list of preferred Zero Waste materials and systems quickly
points
up the (ironic) point that often the environmentally superior
solution
is also the cheapest. Examples include: reusable cloth shopping
bags
instead of disposable (or even recyclable) plastic or paper bags;
refillable coffee mugs instead of paper or polystyrene cups; water
consumed from the tap or via refillable containers, rather than
single-serve plastic containers (often transported great distances);
soft drinks and beer, etc. sold in refillable containers rather than
throwaway “recyclable” containers; computers and other electronics
equipment designed for easy dismantling for reuse or recycling at
end-of-life; packaging made from recyclable and renewable fibres rather
than plastics derived from fossil fuels (e.g., foam, film plastic,
bubble wrap, etc.). The savviest Zero Waste proponents prefer not to
play the game of trying to specify which materials are the best or
worst; instead, they say that if we force industry to internalize its
costs (and not externalize them onto the environment of ratepayers) the
most eco-efficient solutions will emerge.
9. Zero Waste advocates
decry the situation in which public policy often
focuses only on residential
waste which, while visible to voters, is
only about one-third of the waste
stream. The other two-thirds of
commercial and industrial waste is made up
primarily of recyclable
materials such as metal, paper, cardboard, wood,
etc. that should not be
sent to landfill. It’s time, they say, for policies
that consider all
“three-thirds” of the waste stream.
10. The Zero
Waste movement is not advocating a return to some kind of
pre-industrial
Stone Age. It’s not attempting to turn the clock back
very far. Our
grandparents who survived the Great Depression knew a
thing or two about
thrift and the value of reusing glass bottles and
getting all the possible
use out of a product. In their day, durability
was prized over mere
“convenience.” The throwaway society was invented
in the 1950s in the era
when “cheap” energy from oil and electricity
seemed limitless, and the
modern chemical industry was born. In an era
of peak oil and greater
awareness of the dangers from some synthetic
chemicals, it’s time to rethink
the throwaway society and replace its
values with those of just two or three
generations ago.
*Conclusion*
When we complain about the
“inconvenience” of having to bring a reusable
cloth shopping bag into the
grocery store, or ride a bike to work (where
possible), or put our kitchen
scraps into a green bin for composting,
what we’re really complaining about
is having to change from a “waste
full” way of being in the world to a
“waste less” way of life. We’re
like modern equivalents of degenerate
aristocrats who, having fallen on
difficult times, have to learn to live
without servants, empty their own
bed pans, wash their own soiled linens and
cook their own food.
The modern throwaway society gave us a lot of
convenience over the past
half-century, and it also spoiled us rotten and
made us careless
individuals who cry crocodile tears over bleached coral
reefs or
disappearing rain forest even as we move into larger and larger
climate-controlled homes filled with designer furniture and appliances
that magazines have convinced us we must have. Indeed, we have a fetish
now for these things.
Marshall McLuhan once said, “There are no
passengers on Spaceship Earth.
We are all crew.” He made this statement in
1965, in reference to
/Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth/ (1963) by
Buckminster Fuller.
That statement is something I think about every day,
both the McLuhan
quote and the title of Buckminster Fuller’s book. Whether
you’re an
environmental engineer, a waste recycling coordinator, a person
working
in industry, a consumer or just (!) an interested citizen, you are
engaged, as a crew member, in the ad hoc writing of that operating
manual. The Zero Waste movement is currently writing a section --
perhaps a whole chapter -- in that manual, because waste is the rough,
cut-your-fingers edge where the consumer society and Earth’s natural
systems collide. It’s where we can measure the size and depth of our
ecological footprint.
Far from being just about “the household
trash,” Zero Waste is really
about…
everything.
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