Zero Waste Movement: Turning Waste into a Resource through Composting and Bioplastics

Article - Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None Talks about an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” ….. The movement is simple in concept……to Produce less waste. What is the zero waste? Zero waste that the entire concept of waste should be eliminated. Instead, waste should be thought of as a “residual product” or simply a “potential resource”. • A residual product OR COMPOSTABLE ITEMS….. Bioplastics like the forks (at Yellowstone) made from plant materials like cornstarch that mimic plastic, are used to manufacture a growing number of items that are compostable.

For example, a polystyrene foam containers(Plastic plates, forks, cups,coffee cups) /AREBEING MADE OF CORNSTARCH- Corn starch is basically white flour made from corn. You can find it anywhere they sell regular flour. Corn starch is a starch or a starchy flour made from corn and used for thickening gravies and sauces. For example, ! (1)a city in California called Santa monica which bans the use of polystyrene foam containers, Yellowstone and some institutions have asked manufacturers to mark some biodegradable items with a brown or green stripe.

SUCH AS THE PLASTICS THAT THEY SERVE US IN THE CAFETERIA ARE BEING MADE CORNSTARCH. When u throw away this kind of plastics and end up in the garbage landfills. After days of the sun hitting these things they rELEASE METHANE. when sealed in landfills without oxygen, organic materials release methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, as they decompose. If composted, however, the food can be broken down and returned to the earth as a nonchemical fertilizer with no methane by-product.

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Americans are still the undisputed champions of trash, dumping 4. 6 pounds per person per day While the U. S. shares only 4. 7 % of the total population in the world, we produce more 33% of the total waste in the world. About 97. 5% of the solid wastes produced by the U. S. are industrial, and 1. 5% are from homes and businesses in or near urban areas (municipal solid waste). BUT this 1. 5 % is not as small as you would first think! The U. S. produces about 506 billion pounds of garbage every year.

The amount doubled in the last 30 years. "This is enough waste to fill a bumper-bumper convoy of garbage truck encircling the globe eight times" (Miller, P369). We are producing an average of 1800 pounds of garbage per person every year. We are wasting more than any other countries in the world! In other words, we are ruining the Earth by wasting resources, polluting the environment, or destroying the ecosystem more rapidly than any other time in the history, and no one has ever caused more damage to the earth than the US has. BENEFITS

Since waste is a sign of inefficiency, the reduction of waste usually reduces costs. For example, Hewlett Packard in Roseville, CA reduced its waste by 95% and saved $870,564 in 1998. Epson in Portland, OR has reduced its waste to zero and has saved $300,000. Interface, Inc. in Atlanta, GA has eliminated over $90M in waste. Xerox Corp. , Rochester, NY has had a Waste-Free Factory environmental performance goal since the early 1990s. The criteria include reductions in solid and hazardous waste, emissions, energy consumption, and increased recycling.

Savings were $45M in 1998. A Zero Waste strategy improves upon "cleaner production" and "pollution prevention" strategies by providing a visionary endpoint that leads us to take larger, more innovative steps The vision of Zero Waste can be seen as a solution to these needs and a key to our grandchildren's future. Zero solid waste, zero hazardous waste, zero toxic emissions, zero material waste, zero energy waste and zero waste of human resources will protect the environment and lead to a much more productive, efficient, and sustainable future.

Zero Waste promotes not only reuse and recycling, but also, and more importantly, promotes prevention - designs that consider the entire product life cycle. These new designs will strive for reduced materials use, use of recycled materials, use of more benign materials, longer product lives, repairability, and ease of disassembly at end of life. A Zero Waste strategy is a sound business tool that, when integrated into business processes, provides an easy to understand stretch goal that can lead to innovative ways to identify, prevent and reduce wastes of all kinds.

It strongly supports sustainability by protecting the environment, reducing costs and producing additional jobs in the management and handling of wastes back into the industrial cycle. A Zero Waste strategy may be applied to businesses, communities, industrial sectors, schools and homes. (2)new San Francisco ordinance requiring residential and commercial building owners to sign up for recycling and composting services officially kicked on last Tuesday. but growing evidence already suggests that the law has had an impact.

Since June, when the ordinance was signed into law, the amount of compostables collected from residents and businesses in special green-colored bins had jumped to 500 tons a day, according to Recology, the city’s waste collection company. San Francisco officials felt an ordinance making recycling and composting mandatory was needed to meet the city’s goal of diverting 75 percent of its already substantial collection of recyclable materials (the city has a 72 percent recycling rate, the highest in the nation) away from landfills by 2010.

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