Zero waste
From Envirowiki
Zero waste is not a form of waste. Zero means none at all, not a part of the category.
Zero Waste is a term that was invented by Paul Palmer in the early 1970's when he named his Oakland, California-based chemical company Zero Waste Systems Inc (ZWS). The mission of the company was to find new uses for chemical by-products, especially from the nascent electronic companies then forming in Silicon Valley and environs. But beyond that, ZWS accepted the challenge of reuse for any unwanted chemical product or byproduct that they encountered.
Even at that time, the recycling movement was mired in the notion that reuse had to consist of treatment or some kind of degradation, followed by rebuilding useful materials from the breakdown of all goods into simple, basic, materials such as paper fiber, steel scrap, broken glass (called cullet), or ground up plastic. These notions, which were rejected by ZWS, arose from the outlook of the garbage industry. ZWS considered itself a branch of the chemical industry, and endeavored to find the highest uses rather than the lowest functions of the products it dealt with. Mixed solvents were relabelled and resold as found, without separation or with minimal purification whenever possible. One of the most profitable projects was the sale of Developer-Rinse from the microelectronics industry. This mixture of Xylene and Butyl Acetate was simply relabelled as a lacquer thinner (called Zerol) and marketed everywhere in the Bay Area, including to painters preparing the very chassis which would house the very same microchips that gave rise to the lacquer thinner in the first place.
The lessons from this work with chemicals were found to be applicable across the board to all products. More information is to be found in the book Getting To Zero Waste Book published by Paul Palmer in 2005[1].
As fully developed, Zero Waste has come to mean the design of products so that discard plays no role in their life cycle. After initial use, there will be a continued use pattern but no discard, no disposal and no destruction of function. Zero Waste in this sense can be said to mean the preservation and recycling of function, rather than materials. There are times when materials form the highest function available but for the most part, higher functions are addressed. Zero Waste is to be distinguished from recycling in various ways:
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[edit] Design principle
The primary distinction: Zero Waste is a design principle, not a discard and reuse principle. It is achieved by redesigning products and processes NOT by accepting any old kind of design, accepting discard and then scrambling at the last minute to put together some kind of last minute, low level reuse project. Zero Waste intersects nowhere with today's reigning paradigm of garbage creation and dumping. Zero Waste is never approached by improving garbage management, by studying the components of garbage or by enhancing recycling. Zero Waste requires the confidence to visualize a new way to create and use a given product and then design products and processes to achieve that new way. It challenges the environmentalist more deeply than recycling can and demands that he believe in his ability to see beyond conventional throw away marketing, planned obsolescence and accepted breakdown to perpetual cycles of reuse. In practice, this is the Achilles heel of Zero Waste design. Environmentalists are not used to designing products, preferring to accept whatever is thrown at them in degraded forms.
[edit] materials
Zero Waste views simple materials as one more product, to be redesigned in the same way that a high function airplane or the flight system might need to be redesigned. Materials are usually distinguished on a molecular level, though occasionally higher assemblages are accepted as being basic. For example: glass, steel, cobalt, nickel, and sulfuric acid are all defined molecularly, while paper fiber is more complex than merely cellulose, of which it is composed. This is a convention that can shift according to usage. There are many methods for treating simple materials as functional products. The main need is for keeping extensive track of information. The fender of a car may be made out of plastic but what does that mean? Recyclers are used to the fairly meaningless designations known as recycling identifications, such as the number one meaning polyethylene. But the Zero Waster wants to first supply the information that will allow that fender to be used qua fender by labelling it with information such as the brand, model, year, part no. and part function of the fender so that it can be first reused in its highest function. But if it has been smashed or deformed or melted, it may be necessary to move to the level of treating it as a material. In that case, Zero Waste recognizes that there more than ten thousand different kinds of plastic. The identification consists of all data about that plastic including the overall polymer, other alloying polymers, pigments, UV stabilizers, fillers, stiffeners, melt indices, melting and softening curves, polymer manufacturer, date of forming, melt history and anything else that might be useful to anyone at all. Then the fender can be ground to chips and intelligently marketed to a plastics former with a full history.
[edit] design
Recyclers virtually universally shun the burden of new design. Yet they feel the need for moving forward. So they have turned to indirect proposals (a form of "magical thinking") which they hope will have some progressive effect in reducing waste creation. Chief among these are bans and a device called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). BANS - as flimsy plastic disposable grocery bags are condemned, the recyclers have lined up behind banning these bags. This took place in San Francisco in 2007 though in many other jurisdictions, bans were opposed in court and found to be anti-competitive and illegal. However the recyclers never seek to design a preferred alternative behavior first, before seeking bans. This would be a Zero Waste approach, since Zero Waste recognizes the need for legitimate functions to be served and designs new products that serve those functions, but without discard. EPR - This campaign seeks to collect garbage (note that garbage is still produced) and return it to the original manufacturer or wholesaler or retailer or distributor or anyone else connected with the sale or creation of the product. No more than this. There is a hope expressed that this simple act will lead to greater recycling, but the reason for this hope is never analysed. The benefits of this change are assumed to be self-evident needing no analysis or design. The one exception is in San Francisco's discussion, where they note that garbage dumping is so expensive that the city wishes to transfer the expense to someone else.
Zero Waste has a number of particularly important methods for making it easier to reuse higher functions. It is recognized that the introduction of conserving methods will be bitterly resisted by a wasteful commercial society that depends on garbage generation to motivate the constant purchase of new models. However this suggests a critical link in wasteful behaviors. If the dumping of usable functions is prohibited - if the garbage dump is ruled off limits for a class of products for which Zero Waste designs are available - then those manufacturers will have no choice but to stop depending on discard to stimulate sales. They will need to institute the new designs. Note that this approach requires FIRST designing the new models or behaviors and then SECOND banning dumping, not the other way around.
1. ENHANCING REPAIR - As the planet approaches peak oil, peak energy, peak water, peak metals and more, we can no longer afford to create the same functions over and over, interspersed with discard of each un-repairable model. Repair and upgrade will need to become once again the normal course for treating broken products. But how is this to be re-introduced? Here are some ideas, based on Zero Waste principles. ONE, EXTENSIVE INFORMATION - One of the problems encountered by repairmen everywhere is the lack of information. Consider therefore the impact of requiring EVERY technical product to have its circuit board, blueprint and test specifications published on the Internet BEFORE it can be sold. Other details would be to prohibit the use of proprietary component labels and undecipherable hidden components on the charts. Also, consider the effect of a REPAIRABILITY LEVEL label on every technical product, the way that labels routinely carry Energy Star ratings or trans-fat levels. And finally, consider the impact of requiring a network of repairmen for twenty years for every product. TWO, STANDARDIZATION - Consider fastenings and tools on mechanical products, especially cars. Consider the impact of requiring a fairly small number of fastening designs, together with a ban on inaccessible proprietary designs made to exclude anyone but the specialist. This is common in today's designs. THREE, MODULARITY - This means designing products with interchangeable parts that can be plugged into each other or connected up in standard ways. Even high level products include many standard functions, such as a VCR using a standard tape loading mechanism. This whole design approach can be expanded and required. Then when models improve due to technological progress, at least the older functions can be preserved in modules.
[edit] external links
Much more about Zero Waste can be found at my website at http://www.zerowasteinstitute.org
Article submitted by Paul Palmer PhD
