President, The Plactory, Santa Cruz CA
I shall start by confessing that we "well meaning Californian recycling activists" are not the originators of Zero Waste, and we certainly are not the only ones who are interested in this concept.
First of all, Zero Waste is a concept as old as history. Humanity has always worked hard to seek efficiency and the elimination of waste in all of its endeavors. It is only in the 20th century that we began to think of things as disposable. In fact this "disposable society" concept is scarcely more than a few decades old and already many European countries are rapidly moving towards reducing and reusing packaging and other materials as well as 100% recycling of what is left. Landfills are expected to be extinct in Europe within a few decades. Austria has already achieved a 90% reduction in waste. The capital state of Australia has signed on to the goal of "Zero Waste by 2010" because when they asked the public what kind of waste program the public wanted they were told to eliminate ALL waste! Businesses such as Xerox, Dupont, Anderson Carpets, Patagonia, and Mad River Brewing are all working hard to eliminate ALL waste, and some have achieved 80-90% reductions in the past five to ten years already. In fact any savvy business person will tell you that a perfect business is 100% efficient and thus has NO WASTE. If these are not Zero Waste goals, well then I don’t know what is.
Mr. Kneass states that many in the recycling community find that Zero Waste stands to weaken the push for sustainability, and lists his reasons:
* Lacks an Implementation Plan:
Well, I must confess that I do not have the single, completely detailed and perfect implementation plan. But I do agree with Paul Hawkens notion that if you make the generation of waste expensive, it will not take long for businesses to find a multitude of ways to eliminate it. In other words given the proper incentives, the free will market do it.
I would like to ask Mr. Kneass: What is your goal? I’ve been in business for twenty-five years and have dealt with many business consultants and planners. One of the first things they all ask is: What is your GOAL! After all, if you don't know where you are going, how can you expect to get there? They want a simple, easy to understand and easy to focus on goal - one that can be broken down into a slogan! They do not want some complex convoluted legal description that can turn into anything. Remember, the slogan is a marketers best friend! Wasn’t "Don’t Litter - Keep America Beautiful" an important part in reducing roadside trash, or at the very least imprinting the notion that we as a nation do not condone littering?
Yes, Zero Waste is a slogan. Zero Waste is a simple yet accurate and easy to understand goal. If you publicize this goal it will cause people to stop and think before they design a product, before they develop a manufacturing process and before they buy or throw something away. It will help lead to a broad public understanding of what it means to be sustainable and that will greatly simplify the work required to grow the political will to create the economic incentives to get to Zero Waste.
* Weakens the Attainable and It’s an Impossible Goal:
Mr. Kneass says that world peace and the elimination of poverty are impossible objectives. Even if these are impossible dreams does that mean we ought to just give up or limit ourselves to goals such as a 25% reduction in wars or 35% less poverty? We do not have national debates over whether we want to reduce crime and drunk driving by 25% or 35%. Instead we all seem to agree that our goal is to fight crime and stop drunk driving. If along the way we set percentage reductions to be achieved by certain dates, these are targets on the path to an ideal that we dream about. I doubt you will find anyone in the crime or drunk driving arena who will not readily tell you how they wish we could eliminate these problems. It is truly astonishing to me that so many people in the recycling arena seem to be downright embarrassed to talk about the dream of eliminating waste.
Of course Zero Waste is not an easy goal. But remember, developing the infrastructure to create all this waste in the first place was also difficult. It was only with the investment of trillions of dollars of government incentives (in the form of subsidies) and more than a hundred years of effort that our free market economy managed to move us from a puritan waste not people to a full blown consumer, throw away society. To expect everything to change overnight, to expect new recycling based industries to become competitive and profitable from the get go, is patently absurd. That is like giving someone a 99 yard head start in a 100 yard dash. It is not easy to overcome societal inertia or the interests those businesses and institutions that might be threatened by these changes. It takes time and money to develop and implement new technologies and habits. To get to Zero Waste might not happen quickly, and we may never truly get to absolute Zero, but Zero Waste is a goal we can use to help us stay focused and moving in the right direction.
*Lacks Public Support & Its Timing is Poor:
First of all more Americans recycle than vote. By the NRC’s own poll of 1997 some 44% of Americans recycle once a week. This does not sound like something that lacks for public support. By John Tierneys own admission an awful lot of us give willingly of our time and take the trouble to sort our trash and see that our recyclables get to where they can be recycled. I have seen many instances where people go to heroic levels to find recyclers who will take the stuff they have accumulated.
Secondly, much of the public thinks recycling is a solved problem, a dead issue, a done deal! We have curb-side collection, super-market redemption centers, and now many programs even take all those plastics with the chasing arrow symbols on the bottom. You can even send your old toner cartridges back. Solid Waste managers are constantly touting how much they are recycling, and even the President says that the government shall buy recycled. Since the public thinks waste reduction is all taken care of there is no need to get all worked up and apply political pressure to do more. If any of you waste reduction advocates believe that this is not a done deal, perhaps you need to think about the message you are sending to the public.
As to timing: It is certainly true that the Environmental is not the hot political potato these days. But as many things in life, politics is like an ocean where issues ebb and flow, and some come storming in on waves. From the perspective of this Californian, I can see the next set of environmental waves building out on the horizon. If you want to eliminate waste you need to paddle out just past where the waves break. From the right place, at just the right moment you will be able to catch one of those waves and ride it into a Zero Waste future. I hope that those of you who do this work because you want to help make this a better world don’t give up the impossible dream and that you can see past the obfuscation and divisive tactics used by those who fear and fight change. I hope that you come out and join us.
Stephen Suess
President Zero Waste Institute
Chair 1997 Zero Waste Conf. of the CRRA’s
Owner The Plactory, a plastics recycling business