ZERO WASTE

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ZERO WASTE
by JANE BOGNER
SUNDAY, July 24, 2005

This week finds me getting ready for my annual backpacking trip to the High Sierra with a group of women. Spending eight days on the trail with all our provisions on our backs makes us carefully consider what we need and what we can live without. Since I am one of the "young ones, " I have relied on the years of wisdom from this group that was originally started by Doris Klein. To conserve on space and weight, we generally remove excess packaging from the food so we will have less to carry out. As careful as we are, we still bring home plastic bags and metallic-lined wrappers. Which brings me to the subject of Zero Waste.

The California Integrated Waste Management Board (www.ciwmb.ca.gov) states that "Zero Waste is based on the concept that wasting resources is inefficient and that it is better to promote the efficient use of our natural resources. Zero Waste promotes maximizing our existing recycling and reuse efforts, while ensuring that products are designed for the environment and have the potential to be repaired, reused, or recycled."

"Zero waste involves utilizing the most effective industry processing or manufacturing practices to efficiently conserve the use of raw materials through front-end design. It includes promoting technology to encourage source reduction on the front end and recycling and other technologies on the back end. In-house wastes should be considered for conversion into green fuel or energy for the business." Are we ready for Zero Waste in our homes? Look up from your paper and survey the items in your room. Just how many things can be easily recycled or repaired. Too many things; the baskets, the furniture, the carpet, don't have a viable recycling market when we no longer want them.

The Grass Roots Recycling Network (www.grrn.org) reported that many communities around the world have begun to adopt Zero Waste goals including Seattle, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz County. They have put together these eleven steps to assist in developing Zero Waste policies and programs:

Know Your Waste and Design It Out
1. Evaluate materials discarded according to the Urban Ore (Oakland CA) Master Categories of discarded materials. Determine how and where materials are discarded, and identify alternatives.
2. Design waste out of the system by holding producers responsible for their impact. Establish environmentally preferable purchasing guidelines to reduce resource use and cut air and water emissions.

Adopt a Zero Waste Goal and Plan for It
3. Adopt a community-wide Zero Waste goal via resolution or an ordinance defining objectives.
4. Involve residents and businesses actively in the development of a Zero Waste Plan.
5. Work with other local governments and businesses to build useful alliances and share successes. Contact Zero Waste International Alliance, CA Resource Recovery Association (CRRA), and the Northern CA Recycling Association (NCRA) for help.

Hold Producers Responsible
6. Hold businesses financially or physically responsible for their products and packaging. For retailers, ask them to take back products and packaging for problem materials not included in residential recycling programs such as rigid Styrofoam inserts. For contractors and developers, adopt requirements for LEED-certified Green Buildings, encourage adaptive reuse and deconstruction, and require recycling of construction and demolition debris.

End Subsidies for Wasting
7. Adopt policies and economic incentives that make it cheaper to recycle, reuse or compost than to landfill or incinerate.
Build Infrastructure Beyond Recycling
8. Ask local businesses to adopt Zero Waste plans.
9. Support existing reuse, recycling and composting businesses and nonprofit organizations and help them expand. Develop locally owned and independent infrastructure.

Create Jobs and Sustainable Communities
10. Develop regional resource recovery sites to provide locations for expansion of reuse, recycling and composting businesses.
11. Fund community Zero Waste initiatives with fees levied on the disposal of wastes and by leveraging the investments of the private sector.
The California Chapters of the Sierra Club have made Zero Waste a priority encouraging members to be come involved locally. On a personal level, call one company each year to protest a product or package that cannot be recycled.

VALCORE Recycling President Jane Bogner's "A Sorted Affair" is published every other week in the Times-Herald, Community Outlook Section. For recycling information call her at 645-8258 or visit www.VALCORErecycling.org.