What is zero waste?
Zero waste is when everything is healthy food for something else
Peer-reviewed definition:
The conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.
Zero Waste International Alliance
Zero waste often gets framed in terms of “diversion rate,” or how much material can we send somewhere besides a landfill. The danger of this is that it hides the much more beneficial strategies like reusing, using less, using gentler, using longer, and—most importantly—not using at all.
No amount of diversion is going to solve the waste crisis. We need to stop producing waste (even if it’s compost or recycling) because most of the negative impact we’re hoping to avoid happens during production, not during waste management.
The most environmentally friendly product is the one that never gets made.
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