Actually, all pollution is simply an unused resource. Garbage is the only raw material that we're too stupid to use.
Dealing with ever-growing mountains of trash is a problem. People throw out too much stuff, including recyclables and perfectly good items that have plenty of useful life left in them. Instead of continuing down the same road and building more incinerators and landfills, why don't we reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place? The following sections are chock-full of strategies that'll help you throw away less stuff.
If the current system of buying things, using them once or for a while, and then throwing them away creates too much waste, maybe the problem is the system. That's what people in the zero-waste movement argue. They take the concept of "reduce, reuse, recycle" to a whole new level. The idea is to cut waste as much as possible, preferably all the way—so "zero waste" isn't just an attention-getting name; the folks in this movement really mean it.
In nature, nothing goes to waste. In the fall, for example, it may look like leaves "litter" the forest floor, but those leaves turn into humus (Keep (Chemicals) Off the Grass!), which enriches the soil and helps plants grow. Zero-waste fans want to apply the same principle to garbage, which they like to call "potential resources" or "residual products" instead. They want to stamp out waste and come up with a whole new way of managing resources.
The old-school way of doing things, sometimes called the "cradle-to-grave" approach, starts with an item's production. That item gets sold, used, and then thrown away. Zero-waste advocates take a "cradle-to-cradle" approach, which means that every used product can become a new resource. Each stage in an item's lifecycle offers opportunities for increasing efficiency, reusing or recycling resources, and eliminating waste.
For example, think of a pickle jar. In the cradle-to-grave approach, a company makes silicon dioxide (that's the fancy name for sand) into glass and shapes the glass into a jar. Next, the jar gets filled with pickles and lands on your store's shelf. You buy the jar, eat the pickles, and toss the jar in the trash, and then the jar makes its final journey to a landfill (its "grave").
By contrast, here's the cradle-to-cradle approach: The jar begins life the same way, but after you eat the pickles, you rinse out the jar and use it as a vase for cut flowers from your garden. At the end of the growing season, put it in your recycling bin so it's no longer trash—it's a resource. It might get washed out and filled with a fresh batch of pickles, or smashed up and recycled into a jar, bottle, fiberglass, ceramic tile, concrete, or even sand to replenish an eroded beach. Reusing and recycling old jars means that fewer jars need to be made in the first place.
According to the National Recycling Coalition, glass is infinitely recyclable: It never wears out.
Zero waste aims to use energy and resources 100% efficiently. That goal applies to all the ways people use resources (both natural and manmade): manufacturers, retailers, transportation companies, consumers, communities, schools, and so on. Whether you're working to reduce piles of paper at work or the amount of stuff you throw out at home, any change you make helps nudge the world closer to zero waste.
To learn more about zero waste or get involved, visit the Zero Waste Alliance's site at www.zerowaste.org.