Zero waste means setting a new goal for how we live in the world one that aims to reduce what we trash in landfills and incinerators to zero and to rebuild our local economies in support of community health, sustainability, and justice.
At its most basic level, zero waste is about significantly reducing and eventually completely eliminating the amount of resources that we send to disposal. Most of what we now waste can be safely and economically recycled, reused, composted, or turned into biogas through anaerobic digestion. We also need to simply use fewer disposable products and redesign our products so that they are toxic-free and built to last. But zero waste is about much more.
Zero waste programs include all of the following strategies:
- Reducing consumption and discards
- Reusing discards
- The principle of producer accountability (including extended producer responsibility strategies)
- Comprehensive recycling
- Comprehensive composting or bio-digestion of organic materials
- Citizen participation and worker rights
- A ban on waste incineration and illegal dumping
- The systematic reduction of land filling over time
- Effective policies, regulations, incentives, and financing structures to support these systems.
We have followed a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused. The goal is for no trash to be sent to landfills, incinerators or the ocean, hence stepping towards carbon neutral future.