Zero Waste - Recycling and Rotting (composting)

Recycling and Rotting (composting)

It is important to distinguish recycling from Zero Waste.

Some claim that the key component to zero waste is recycling while others reject that notion in favor of reusing high function. The common understanding of recycling is simply that of placing bottles and cans in a recycle bin. The modern version of recycling is more complicated and involves many more elements of financing and government support. For example, a 2007 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that the US recycles at a national rate of 33.4% and includes in this figure composted materials. In addition many worldwide commodity industries have been created to handle the materials that are recycled. At the same time, claims of recycling rates have sometimes been exaggerated, for example by the inclusion of soil and organic matter used to cover garbage dumps daily, in the "recycled" column. In states with recycling incentives, there is constant local pressure to pump up the recycling rate figures.

The movement toward recycling has separated itself from the concept of zero waste. One example of this is the computer industry where worldwide millions of PC's are disposed of each year (160 million in 2007). Those computers that enter the recycling stream are broken down into a small amount of raw materials while most merely enter dumps through export to third world countries. Companies are then able to purchase some raw materials, notably steel, copper and glass, reducing the use of new materials. On the other hand, there is an industry, more aligned with the Zero Waste principle of design for long term reuse, that actually repairs computers. It is called the Computer Refurbishing industry and it predates the current campaign to just collect and ship electronics. They have organizations and conferences and have for many years donated computers to schools, clinics and non-profits. Zero Waste planning demands that components be redesigned for effective reuse over long lives leading to even more refurbishing and repair.

There is one seminal example that brings out the difference between Zero Waste and recycling in stark relief. That example, quoted in Getting To Zero Waste, is the software business. Zero Waste is sensitive to the waste of intellectual effort that would be caused by the need to recreate certain basic inventions of software (called objects in software design) as opposed to copying them over and over whenever needed. The waste would occur as the software developers consume resources while solving problems already solved earlier. The application of Zero Waste analysis is straightforward as it recommends conserving human effort. On the other hand, the usual approach of recycling would be to look for some materials that could be found to reuse. The materials on which software is saved (such as paper or diskettes)is of little significance compared to the saving of human effort and if software is saved electronically, there is no media at all. Thus Zero Waste correctly identifies a wasteful behavior to avoid while recycling has no application.

The recycling movement has been embraced by the garbage industry because it serves so well as greenwashing i.e. a way to show that design for garbage creation is acceptable because materials will be kept out of a dump by recycling them. Zero Waste, on the other hand, offers the garbage industry no such screen against public condemnation of waste, and therefore actually threatens the continued need for garbage disposal. For example, in Alameda County, California, garbage dumping is charged a surcharge of $8/ton (as of 2009) which goes entirely for a recycling subsidy but none of which goes for any kind of Zero Waste style designing. Zero Waste has received no support from the garbage industry or politicians under their control except in those cases where it can be claimed to consist solely of more recycling.