Fixed Abode

an o iv a o ast if in Ba i

On a worldwide level much hoopla surrounds waste management and the effort to clean up our soiled and littered planet. Some countries and communities are way ahead of the pack and most every country in the world is doing something to contain, limit or manage their waste.

Cleanup has many guises. ut here does all that gathered aste go ou re looking at a mountain of asteables that are disposed of e ery day detritus from gardens and households, restaurants, hotels and other small and big businesses, industrial and agricultural aste, mainly toxic chemicals.

Resource management and zero aste are nice buzz phrases and embrace some lofty principles and philosophy. he accepted de nition is that zero aste is a goal for people to embrace a lifestyle that emulates sustainable natural cycles here all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use. On the theoretical le el, proponents of zero aste are talking about ideal conditions, about our connection to nature here, by the ay, there is NO aste as Mother Nature recycles e erything and our role of being a part of it instead of feeling apart from it. hey ill tell you that aste is not aste until it s asted, hich is something e should a oid or stri e to ban from our life.

o understand proper aste management, you ha e to apply hole system thinking, from beginning to end of the product cycle - hich is often not the case. People tend to zero in on parts of the system like the production of consumables, the extraction of fossil fuels or ra materials to produce these consumables, the transportation and the huge carbon footprint of the product being mo ed from manufacturer to consumer, the packaging for those products hich can take on many forms, the aste disposal and the intangibles such as health and social impacts, the struggle bet een eco hich embraces all of us and ego indi idual needs and ants . It starts with production xperts claim that aste is inherently a design problem and should be recti ed at the beginning by designing the product s discarded materials to become the source for other users, exactly as happens in nature. n other ords, products and their packaging should be designed to be re-used, recycled, repaired or repurposed. ith the understanding that production should also use clean energy, i.e. non-toxic or natural resources or elements, to manufacture them.

he producer also needs packaging to safeguard his products during transportation but currently, not much is done to ensure the recyclable or compostable nature of this packaging so that e are inundated ith un anted plastic containers or rappers, foil packets, Styrofoam packing and other unnatural materials that do not recycle themsel es. All this to say that e end up ith a lot of aste after the product is eaten, consumed, installed or in use. n ali a lot of that is readily isible as garbage by the side of the roads, in the subaks, creeks, ri ers and ocean. ou also need to think about the electronic aste ith toxic components you produce after you upgrade that old computer, buy that ne hand phone or tablet, e en replace your dead batteries or burned-out light bulbs. hat about your household toxics like paint, sol ents, cleaning products here do your old appliances and cars end up Here in ali, none of that gets properly recycled or collected hen its end-of-life phase is reached. ero aste thinking must start ith producers, designers and engineers ho should be rethinking the planned obsolescence philosophy of manufactured goods and build more durable products, re-engineer thro -a ay packaging and design something that precludes single-use packaging. Computer hard are and appliances should be built so that their arious parts can be separated and reco erable chemicals and toxic materials should be substituted ith natural products. he resources used to build the products should be in estigated, re ie ed and replaced ith sustainable or rene able energy to t in ith zero aste philosophy, heeding the ca eat that e en compostable packaging may re uire trees to be felled.

Ha e you e er thought about the side effects of aste Climate change springs to mind, air pollution and toxic drainage in our soils and ater resources. Also diseases caused by bad en ironments and air, soil and ater pollution social and cultural impacts. he list is depressing. ransportation causes a huge carbon footprint as many products are shipped from far-a ay places. A good deal is of necessity like in ali, here local production is ery limited. ut among all the imports, ask yourself ho many are really necessary and ho many are sheer ants instead of needs. o e really need blueberries gro n in Chile, or beans from enya Present initiatives Many communities in the estern orld ha e made great strides in managing their aste products. Household and industrial aste is collected, sorted, recycled, composted or other ise di erted from land lls or incineration. Some places, like San rancisco manages to di ert 0 of their collected aste hich is the highest recycling and compost rate in North America communities in landers come close ith the highest residential aste di ersion rate of urope ith others are not far behind. Some countries in urope ha e enacted la s to force producers to take back their containers or packaging, e en their obsolete or end-of-life products for repurposing or recycling. n ali only ery modest results ha e been booked regardless of the effort that has gone into containing and managing some of our aste. Plastic bags ha e been banned though not from all places, a fe recycling centres are in operation and cleanup cre s are most e ery here. Ho e er, ith our o er o ing land lls and untold aste that still makes its ay to the seas surrounding us, e are still near the bottom of the orld ide cleanup effort. e ha e some ay to go to come e en close to the zero aste goal. aste collection and management is still not a big priority here and the go ernment is hardly supporti e in terms of pro iding ade uate funding for the setup of better systems. Conclusion s zero aste a chimera Understand that zero aste is a philosophy, not yet reality, a guidance to approach the perfect zero aste ays of nature. n order to attain that goal our aste economy must be morphed into a circular economy here aste is eliminated and resources are continually re-used on a model of production that practices the borro , use, reuse and return philosophy. ero aste on a practical le el means e do not aste or aste less.

n the end e all bear responsibility to ork to ards a zero aste life, hether e are consumers, politicians, or corporate big igs. As indi iduals, consumers and professionals e can choose to consume less or more responsibly to bear pressure on producers by refusing to buy their un holesome products or their un-compostable or unrecyclable packaging e can pressure our politicians to enact better aste management la s. t is still an uphill struggle but you can start here and no to do your bit to be a responsible aste manager.

By nes ynn

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