Waste Audits & Recyclemania
Zero Waste Philosophy
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Zero Waste Philosophy
In recent decades, resource scarcity has emerged as a growing, global concern. For example:
- The United States has 5% of the world's population but consumes 30% of the world's resources (Seitz, 1995).
- The average American produces 4.5 pounds of garbage a day (EPA, 2007).
- For every one garbage bin put out on the curb, 70 garbage cans were made upstream through the extraction, manufacturing, and distribution processes (Young & Sachs, 1991).
- This means the average American is responsible for the production of 315 pounds of garbage a day—almost 60 tons a year!
The concept of zero waste aims to address the challenge of resource scarcity by changing the way we look at material goods. When an individual is done with a product, the zero waste concept states that it be treated as a potential resource rather than waste.
This involves working with product developers and engineers to design durable and easily reusable products, but it also requires effort on the part of the consumer. Most importantly, the zero waste concept requires that we abandon the tradition of buying, using, and discarding in favor of a more cyclical materials economy.
In other words:
The traditional materials economy
